07-01-2016, 12:09 PM
Hello.
I made this thread to help people be more productive. You see, about a half a month ago I made some changes to my workflow and found surprising results. Not only was I getting a consistant 8 hours of art in a day done. But I was also not as worn down.It still took effort to do that amount, but I found it quite manageable. I was also able to strive for a much higher quality and able to pursue my weaknesses rigorously. Below are some of the techniques I used drawing a lot a habit. to help me get through the days and persist, thus making myself more and more disciplined.
Much of what I am about to write is also the product of "The science of self discipline" by Kerry L. Johnson. The techniques and many texts explaining them are taken directly from my notes while I listened to the audiobook. The book was of much help to me and I recommend you give it a read. The book tells you of ways to make yourself more positive and disciplined.
I also recommend "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"
by Daniel Pink which delves into motivation. It also gives some more info on reward systems, namely the counterproductivness on tasks that require more mental thought.
This method of visualizing your success will set your mind on the task, but it can be used for other purposes aswell, to calm down for example. We all can get overwhelmed in life and its good if you have a quick way to relax. Lets go through a few techniques.
I. Focusing on the pleasure instead of the pain.(Cognitive restructoring method)
Three step process for this is:
1. Make a visual/auditory/kinesthetic representasion of reaching to your goal succesfully before you even start. Visualize the benefits of having an increased skill to drawing and painting. See yourself constructing, drawing accurately and painting in correct tone and color. See yourself creating harmonious lines and compositions. Feel the satisfaction of having really pushed yourself and learned from it. Feel the pride of having done something hard and learned to do it much better. See yourself effcortlessly drawing figures in whatever pose you want and in perspective while having good stylization and energy. See yourself placing masses of light and shadow into a painting and making them harmonize. See people be inspired by your progress and surprised at how good you have become. Feel the pride in as proffessionals comment well on your improvement on art. Feel the inner happiness and fulfillment as you go to sleep after having tomorrow and improve further. Feel the pride as others see your dedication to art and the result spent the entire day on drawing/painting. Feel the joy and exitement of getting to do it all over again of it in your work. Feel the joy of drawing outside in nice weather.
2. Intensify your perception of the images you see. The feelings you feel.
3. Drop everything and start immediately, no need to complete it, just to a tiny bit of it. for example: If doing an accuracy study, get the basic proportions right. For painting make a mark or a color that just looks appealing and right.
Be persistant in practicing these 3 steps to make them automatic. They will be escpecially useful in down time or mood swings. Do them every day. Also its fine to go overboard and visualize something way more ideal than it really is. I mean your mind is already using it against you at some points by imagining things worse than they actually are.
Be sure to repeat the process over the course of the day whenever needed or whenever you feel you will procastinate.
Remind yourself just how good it felt to even do a small bit of something productive.
II. Creative association:
Meditative calm state, 10 steps method. As you walk down the 10 stairs you get calmer, when you get to the bottom imagine yourself in a lush grassland under a tree fresh air around you and a feeling of bliss. Other scenery I have found great to relax in is resting on a leaning chair in a dock over a lake. Its twilight and you can hear the crickets and birds around you. And another one was brought on by a song I heard(The Pillows - Twilight Park Waltz), I imagined this comfy and stylistically appealing bar/cafe setting(If you have played Catherine you know what I mean). I found this very relaxing and also created an association with the song itself, whenever it comes on my brain gets a message to become more relaxed.
To come back out you walk up the stairs and become more avare with each one. After the 3rd step open your eyes. You are now calmer. This exercise takes you around 5 minutes and helps you relax considerably.Note: I usually dont do this part very often, seems to work just as well.
III. Resource circle:
A bit more set up, but found this to be useful, this doesnt have to be a circle in the ground it can also be a certain spot you touch or someting you listen, can even be an activity, be creative. "Concentrate on a succesfull event(whether real or made up), now draw(in your mind) a circle next to you, on your floor next to you. Visualize the succesful event in all 3 predominant senses: See/hear/feel. When you are as close to experiencing/reliving the event step into the circle. Then step out and repeat the process. Now do it again, but without recalling the 3 senses, you should immediately access the succesfull experience and puts you in a high level of concentration. The next time you are in a slump, do this method to help. With the help you can improve your patience in self discipline and keep going."
Visual reminders.
Put a poster or a message that helps you achieve your goal on your desktop.
The pictures can be very useful for 2 reasons.
1. In creating pictures we focus on exacly what were working for.
2. If you dont have a clear cut image of what you want to achieve it is more difficult to endure hardships.
Submodality change.
Assign less attributes to negative memories(make it hazy and small) and enrichen good memories with loads of detail.(large bright full of detail and color.) Same goes for what you want to achieve.
Remember a great memory you had and intensify, at the happiest moment touch yourself on the arm, do this several times to build up the association.
Reframing
I'd say this has been even more helpful than the visualizations, it really gets you to change your mindset and the effects will stay with you. After practicing this method it will easily become almost automatic, you will be able to see the positive consequinces in actions.
Content and context reframing.
Instead of looking at the failures to achieve the accuracy of a study or the aesthetic of a personal piece look at them as indicators to what you need to learn and see them as guides that help you. If it weren't for failures you'd be stuck repeating the same mistakes over and over.
Is a large illustration completely out of your comfort zone overwhelming? What if you imagined listening to your favorite tunes while doing it? What if you broke it down to the Shapes, lineart, base colors, lighting and rendering steps. What if you systematically fixed the weaknesses of the image, the foreground figure with the back to you, the focal point of a ruined temple etc? What if you broke down the weakness to smaller attributes: The proportions of the figure, the perspective of the figure, the gesture of the figure etc. What if you saw yourself more motivated to do the studies for all the parts of it that you struggled with and therefore being more productive.
Doing so will make it manageable. Imagining and planning out doing so will remove the thought of it being overwhelming.
The aspects of pain and pleasure
The most common reason for procastinating is the illusion that you dont have the necessary skills to do something, it is also a deviation from feeling comfortable. There is also an illusion that there will be a lot of hard work and pain which produces discomfort. You are insecure about the task. You also feel guilty for procastination.It is usually the focus on the pain of a task instead of its benefits. To help eliminate it focus on the benefits instead of the pain.
Use the 3 steps in the visualization chapter above to help you reframe your focus from the uncomfortable/overwhelming aspect of art to the positive aspects.
Self doubt procastination.
You can use the cognitive restructuring method or follow this 4-step process.
1.PLAN. Decide what you are going to do for a complex illustration find references, inspiration for designs and ideas, flesh it out in your head. Really figure out what you are going for and then set those limitations and find your reference based on that. Also read up on the logic of the things you will try to convey. Perhaps even watch a documentary. Highlight your biggest weaknesses and plan accordingy to improve on them. Research the issues. In that sence most of your issues will go away.
2.Learn. See what you have to learn to complete the illustration.For each step learn to do it better, learn from the compositon of masters and apply it to your work, same goes for everything else.
3.Observe. See how you feel abaut doing a project, analyze it. If you have a lot of fear or discomfort about the project use the restructoring method. Analize your feelings and emotions. Get a sheet of paper and list all diversions for your project.
4.Engage. Work, even if its a small bit. Engage your mind with an activity, start a small part. Once your engaged its not so bad. Once you open the gate to succession you will be drawn into the activity and might go on for quite a while, you never know. Spending just a few minutes can work.
The fear of failure
One of the biggest roadblocks in disciplined life.
Will you work harder to keep from failing, than to win? If yes you also experience this fear.
This can lead to self sabotage and mediocrity.
For people who dont have this fear this quote fits "you dont have to be sick to get better".
Progressive collapse method.
You go through the failure and see that its not really that bad, you will get over it and try again. For example you keep asking "what then?" after your failire. This will lead you down a series of decicions that show you that failure isnt that bad.
Recent example of failure was my failure in the goal I set, yes felt pretty bad for a day or two, but If it didnt happen I would have never spent a month without internet and go more in depth into the books on my hard drive. I would also never have written this message. The fear only has affect on you if you see yourself experiencing its consequinces, so do the opposite and imagine success.
"Linking pleasure to activities will help you achieve them, linking pain to activites will make you avoid them like an infectious disease."
Changing associations.
The push-pull of the project: The pain pushes you into the project, but it is the pleasure of the results that keeps you going.
Avoiding some activities can cause anxiety, which in turn starts to interfere with your goal.
A good example is from a couple of years ago, when my goal of 5h art a day was interfered from failing in high school. The failures started piling up adding to the stress thus leading to burnout, which took 2 months to recover from. In the 2 months I didn't do much art.
People act in response to reward or punishment.
Too much pain or pleasure can make you undisciplined, the key is to balance it out. In disciplined activities there is a higher level of pain and often enough it works to make you disciplined, as time goes on the pain might start getting too high, when that happens use the techniques above to reduce the said pain. For decreasing pain use the "Creative association" and "Resource circle" techniques listed above.
The structure of habits.
Punishment.
An behavior shaping method that increases anxiety, lowers self esteem and effectiveness.
A common punishment to be wary of is to stop berating yourself. Be nice to yourself, positivity will get you a lot farther than negativity. You might want to give it a try if you are too comfortable and have a very positive stage of life, which makes you lazy.
A good counter to berating yourself is to get a rubber band around your wrist and snap it every time you catch yourself berating yourself. Another method is just pinching yourself. Replace the negative talk with the positive comments. Example: instead of berating yourself and comparing "im not as good as he" or "this looks crappy" replace them with good comments like "this part looks allright or "I nailed that color". Again for failures and mistakes, reframe them and see them as guides. Be objective about it, isolate the issues and practice. I've found that nowadays Im automatically going to fixing the mistakes instead of berating myself, this automatic process saves time and reduces stress a lot.
Verbal rewards, say "good line" or "nice value" etc. whenever you make something pretty.
Goals and a purpose
Smart goal guidelines.
1. Be specific in your goals, make them tangible. They must be measurable.
2. Be willing to sacrifice time and other activities.
3. Schedule for the intermediate and long term
Purpose
Base your purpose around your values.
What are your highest values?"hardworking, proffessionalism, intelligence, success."
Chunking.
"To take something specific up or down"
Proffesionalism chunked down: Self growth, a near mastery of a subject, a career in a subject, being disciplined.
Intelligence chunked down: A large knowledge of a subject likely even several subjects. A rational mindset. Good problem solving skills. Good planning skills.
Dont set goals that are in conflict with values.
Beliefs
Images power your beliefs. Doubt can exist in belief. Visualizing a belief will be calming.
List the outcome you want to achieve, then list qualities you have, as you list them, think about yourself and see if it would be possible for you to do that. Would you have the drive to do it? Look at your positive qualities.
Concentrate on your abilities to succeed, also use earlier achievements as concept of proof. Use the list whenever in doubt. Think about supportive actions and beliefs in a vivid bright way, for doubts use small grayish thoughts.
Sources of beliefs.
1. Surroundings. "The poor would be uncomfortable for suddenly being rich". Can you cope with the changes? Do you think you deserve the outcome? VIsualize the outcome and you with it, see the attributes of the image.
2. Intellect. Do you believe you are intelligent enough to achieve the outcome?
3. Experience.
4. Hopes and expectations.
Get a visual tangible representasion of your belief.
"Winning a large illustration award, you are in a large hall to pick up the prize" Imagine the goal and imagine yourself reaching the goal, the process of it.
Weaken doubt pictures and replace them with belief pictures.
If you have a belief that you are too lazy to reach your goal then make a visual representation of it and make it small fuzzy desaturated, lower the feelings and sounds. Slowly replace that image with a positive image with you studing/practice succesfuly, smiling at the thought of new knowledge gained, intensify. Feel joyous and happy. working.
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Allright that about covers the parts based on "The science of self discipline" and "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"
Additional notes.
-When working, make sure you are as comfortable as possible, even small discomfort can go a long way of wearing you down mentally. This has been one of my main setbacks I believe. My current setup allows me to draw around 7 hours before discomfort starts setting in from the strain. I can feel mild discomfort in my back and wrist. I've switched the setup around 4 times, seeing how the different combinations work. I also try to draw slowly and not draw with my wrist, but due to the tablet size I still slip sometimes and use my wrist.
-Draw right after you eat breakfast or a morning snack. What sets up a productive day is a productive morning. It is like a cornerstone of a building.
-Record your progress, keep those sketchbooks updated :)
-Health is important, get the best setup you can ergonomically, take regular breaks, the maximum drawing session should be 1 hour. Eat healthy. Stretch yourself.
-Dont overwhelm yourself. Isolate the issues in drawing and deal with them. Practice fundamentals, simplify things to make them more manageable then, once the simple things are in place, you can build on them.
-Pick your battles. It is wise to start with more challenging/tedious stuff in the morning, usually followed by an equally important exercise that challenges your weaknesses(however you like to practice this aspect more.) Dont push yourself too far with the tedious challenging stuff, it can leave a bad taste that makes it harder to work later on. Through trial and error you will gain the experience to balance things out for maximum efficency.
-Unify your work, try to hit 2 birds with one stone as much as possible. When you do accuracy, form, perspective, value and color studies have a personal piece you would like to finish as a basis for them.
-Keep something on your drawing table, something you find very appealing. Whenever you are relaxing or on an off day and not really doing any art, this object can get you turned once again to the path of drawing, it will increase your desire and doesnt require any effcort like visualizations.
-Experiment. Do this, with art, with goals and pretty much anything. You gotta try out new things and new ways of doing things.
Thats it for the short tips, next we will go more in depth into other useful aspects.
Self reflection.
You ever wonder on why you do certain activities? Perhaps you had an experience that caused you great sadness, how do you cope? Why did I do this? Why didn't I do that?
Questions like this are just few of many you should ask yourself and then ponder over the answers. In time you will make observations and realize your true values. Self reflection can help you understand yourself better and in doing so benefit future activities, provided you take action.
The aspect of quality
I feel I must also adress this when talking about productivity. Holding yourself to a high quality of standard requires much more effcort than you may be used to, but it is essential for improvement. Whenever you are drawing give it your best and hold yourself up to that standard. If theres any conceivable way to check for mistakes dont hesitate to do it, some ways may be tedious and take time, but they directly attack your hidden weaknesses. This is a widespread problem among novice artists. I was also doing this , but over the time I've started putting in more and more time into quality. It requires much more effcort, but is essential for improvement.
Ego depletion
How to conserve willpower.
The best and fairly obvious thing to do is to PLAN. You need to change your environment or place restrictions on certain activities, better yet to remove temptations alltogether. Delete that video game you keep going back to. Disconnect from the internet. Dont wander around in stores, just go get the essentials. Look up on how much time does it take to watch 10 episodes of "Game of thrones"(if you're behind a season) then take an off day where you do it. Usually watching 1 episode and then having the rest just there creates a strong temptation that can be very depleting. Better yet is to not watch it alltogether, but it is a quality show so it feels wasteful.
What doesn't feel wasteful however is to stop watching all those cheap entertainment youtube videos. I am glad to say I kicked that habit by being without internet for a month. Now I see them for what they are a fun waste of time. The bad habit is gone and the distraction is severed, thus giving me more willpower reserves.
I'd say if you want to drop all those distracting habits go without the internet for a month aswell. And MAKE SURE when you get back you don't fall back into them.
Try it all
You gotta see what works for you, some studies might show that this or that method is ineffective or even counterproductive, but in the end you gotta see what works for you.
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Well I hope you enjoyed my article, I welcome any critiques/debates/discussions. Also share your own experiences and stories. If you have any questions feel free to ask.
And for those keen readers who can't get enough, I will leave some bonus articles that relate to productivity.
Lets start with a classic one, coffee. https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/22/coffee/
Sounds like an ultimate fighting move: Extinction Burst. https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/07/07/...ion-burst/
One of the most harmful mindsets you can have: Learned Helplessness https://youarenotsosmart.com/2009/11/11/...plessness/
I'll write something for this later: Procastination https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/...stination/
This is why you don't want to overwhelm yourself: Ego Depletion https://youarenotsosmart.com/2012/04/17/ego-depletion/
I made this thread to help people be more productive. You see, about a half a month ago I made some changes to my workflow and found surprising results. Not only was I getting a consistant 8 hours of art in a day done. But I was also not as worn down.It still took effort to do that amount, but I found it quite manageable. I was also able to strive for a much higher quality and able to pursue my weaknesses rigorously. Below are some of the techniques I used drawing a lot a habit. to help me get through the days and persist, thus making myself more and more disciplined.
Much of what I am about to write is also the product of "The science of self discipline" by Kerry L. Johnson. The techniques and many texts explaining them are taken directly from my notes while I listened to the audiobook. The book was of much help to me and I recommend you give it a read. The book tells you of ways to make yourself more positive and disciplined.
I also recommend "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"
by Daniel Pink which delves into motivation. It also gives some more info on reward systems, namely the counterproductivness on tasks that require more mental thought.
Visualization
"What stops us from working is the percieved pain of working. Which is often times more than it actually is, since our memories are false in a way where we remember the worst moments more clearly. To combat this perception you gotta reframe the concept of work into something more enjoyable and make it more manageable by breaking it down to steps. You can even imagine it being more enjoyable than it actually is by seeing the perfect scenario."
This method of visualizing your success will set your mind on the task, but it can be used for other purposes aswell, to calm down for example. We all can get overwhelmed in life and its good if you have a quick way to relax. Lets go through a few techniques.
I. Focusing on the pleasure instead of the pain.(Cognitive restructoring method)
Three step process for this is:
1. Make a visual/auditory/kinesthetic representasion of reaching to your goal succesfully before you even start. Visualize the benefits of having an increased skill to drawing and painting. See yourself constructing, drawing accurately and painting in correct tone and color. See yourself creating harmonious lines and compositions. Feel the satisfaction of having really pushed yourself and learned from it. Feel the pride of having done something hard and learned to do it much better. See yourself effcortlessly drawing figures in whatever pose you want and in perspective while having good stylization and energy. See yourself placing masses of light and shadow into a painting and making them harmonize. See people be inspired by your progress and surprised at how good you have become. Feel the pride in as proffessionals comment well on your improvement on art. Feel the inner happiness and fulfillment as you go to sleep after having tomorrow and improve further. Feel the pride as others see your dedication to art and the result spent the entire day on drawing/painting. Feel the joy and exitement of getting to do it all over again of it in your work. Feel the joy of drawing outside in nice weather.
2. Intensify your perception of the images you see. The feelings you feel.
3. Drop everything and start immediately, no need to complete it, just to a tiny bit of it. for example: If doing an accuracy study, get the basic proportions right. For painting make a mark or a color that just looks appealing and right.
Be persistant in practicing these 3 steps to make them automatic. They will be escpecially useful in down time or mood swings. Do them every day. Also its fine to go overboard and visualize something way more ideal than it really is. I mean your mind is already using it against you at some points by imagining things worse than they actually are.
Be sure to repeat the process over the course of the day whenever needed or whenever you feel you will procastinate.
Remind yourself just how good it felt to even do a small bit of something productive.
II. Creative association:
Meditative calm state, 10 steps method. As you walk down the 10 stairs you get calmer, when you get to the bottom imagine yourself in a lush grassland under a tree fresh air around you and a feeling of bliss. Other scenery I have found great to relax in is resting on a leaning chair in a dock over a lake. Its twilight and you can hear the crickets and birds around you. And another one was brought on by a song I heard(The Pillows - Twilight Park Waltz), I imagined this comfy and stylistically appealing bar/cafe setting(If you have played Catherine you know what I mean). I found this very relaxing and also created an association with the song itself, whenever it comes on my brain gets a message to become more relaxed.
To come back out you walk up the stairs and become more avare with each one. After the 3rd step open your eyes. You are now calmer. This exercise takes you around 5 minutes and helps you relax considerably.Note: I usually dont do this part very often, seems to work just as well.
III. Resource circle:
A bit more set up, but found this to be useful, this doesnt have to be a circle in the ground it can also be a certain spot you touch or someting you listen, can even be an activity, be creative. "Concentrate on a succesfull event(whether real or made up), now draw(in your mind) a circle next to you, on your floor next to you. Visualize the succesful event in all 3 predominant senses: See/hear/feel. When you are as close to experiencing/reliving the event step into the circle. Then step out and repeat the process. Now do it again, but without recalling the 3 senses, you should immediately access the succesfull experience and puts you in a high level of concentration. The next time you are in a slump, do this method to help. With the help you can improve your patience in self discipline and keep going."
Visual reminders.
Put a poster or a message that helps you achieve your goal on your desktop.
The pictures can be very useful for 2 reasons.
1. In creating pictures we focus on exacly what were working for.
2. If you dont have a clear cut image of what you want to achieve it is more difficult to endure hardships.
Submodality change.
Assign less attributes to negative memories(make it hazy and small) and enrichen good memories with loads of detail.(large bright full of detail and color.) Same goes for what you want to achieve.
Remember a great memory you had and intensify, at the happiest moment touch yourself on the arm, do this several times to build up the association.
Reframing
"Reframing is built around the concept that there is no inherit good or bad in life
it is only your perception of it."
it is only your perception of it."
I'd say this has been even more helpful than the visualizations, it really gets you to change your mindset and the effects will stay with you. After practicing this method it will easily become almost automatic, you will be able to see the positive consequinces in actions.
Content and context reframing.
Instead of looking at the failures to achieve the accuracy of a study or the aesthetic of a personal piece look at them as indicators to what you need to learn and see them as guides that help you. If it weren't for failures you'd be stuck repeating the same mistakes over and over.
Is a large illustration completely out of your comfort zone overwhelming? What if you imagined listening to your favorite tunes while doing it? What if you broke it down to the Shapes, lineart, base colors, lighting and rendering steps. What if you systematically fixed the weaknesses of the image, the foreground figure with the back to you, the focal point of a ruined temple etc? What if you broke down the weakness to smaller attributes: The proportions of the figure, the perspective of the figure, the gesture of the figure etc. What if you saw yourself more motivated to do the studies for all the parts of it that you struggled with and therefore being more productive.
Doing so will make it manageable. Imagining and planning out doing so will remove the thought of it being overwhelming.
The aspects of pain and pleasure
"State of control vs state of reaction. Self discipline is a state of conditioning. Align your states of pleasure and pain to your goal. To do this change your associations."
Procastination.The most common reason for procastinating is the illusion that you dont have the necessary skills to do something, it is also a deviation from feeling comfortable. There is also an illusion that there will be a lot of hard work and pain which produces discomfort. You are insecure about the task. You also feel guilty for procastination.It is usually the focus on the pain of a task instead of its benefits. To help eliminate it focus on the benefits instead of the pain.
Use the 3 steps in the visualization chapter above to help you reframe your focus from the uncomfortable/overwhelming aspect of art to the positive aspects.
Self doubt procastination.
You can use the cognitive restructuring method or follow this 4-step process.
1.PLAN. Decide what you are going to do for a complex illustration find references, inspiration for designs and ideas, flesh it out in your head. Really figure out what you are going for and then set those limitations and find your reference based on that. Also read up on the logic of the things you will try to convey. Perhaps even watch a documentary. Highlight your biggest weaknesses and plan accordingy to improve on them. Research the issues. In that sence most of your issues will go away.
2.Learn. See what you have to learn to complete the illustration.For each step learn to do it better, learn from the compositon of masters and apply it to your work, same goes for everything else.
3.Observe. See how you feel abaut doing a project, analyze it. If you have a lot of fear or discomfort about the project use the restructoring method. Analize your feelings and emotions. Get a sheet of paper and list all diversions for your project.
4.Engage. Work, even if its a small bit. Engage your mind with an activity, start a small part. Once your engaged its not so bad. Once you open the gate to succession you will be drawn into the activity and might go on for quite a while, you never know. Spending just a few minutes can work.
The fear of failure
One of the biggest roadblocks in disciplined life.
Will you work harder to keep from failing, than to win? If yes you also experience this fear.
This can lead to self sabotage and mediocrity.
For people who dont have this fear this quote fits "you dont have to be sick to get better".
Progressive collapse method.
You go through the failure and see that its not really that bad, you will get over it and try again. For example you keep asking "what then?" after your failire. This will lead you down a series of decicions that show you that failure isnt that bad.
Recent example of failure was my failure in the goal I set, yes felt pretty bad for a day or two, but If it didnt happen I would have never spent a month without internet and go more in depth into the books on my hard drive. I would also never have written this message. The fear only has affect on you if you see yourself experiencing its consequinces, so do the opposite and imagine success.
"Linking pleasure to activities will help you achieve them, linking pain to activites will make you avoid them like an infectious disease."
Changing associations.
"Everything is motivated."
The push-pull of the project: The pain pushes you into the project, but it is the pleasure of the results that keeps you going.
Avoiding some activities can cause anxiety, which in turn starts to interfere with your goal.
A good example is from a couple of years ago, when my goal of 5h art a day was interfered from failing in high school. The failures started piling up adding to the stress thus leading to burnout, which took 2 months to recover from. In the 2 months I didn't do much art.
People act in response to reward or punishment.
Too much pain or pleasure can make you undisciplined, the key is to balance it out. In disciplined activities there is a higher level of pain and often enough it works to make you disciplined, as time goes on the pain might start getting too high, when that happens use the techniques above to reduce the said pain. For decreasing pain use the "Creative association" and "Resource circle" techniques listed above.
The structure of habits.
Habits are formed by repeating an activity due to the fulfillment and pleasure we get from it. Rewards can be used to make certain activities a habit. However, if an activity requires higher cognitive functions the rewards may get counterproductive. You begin to focus on the reward too, not just the intrinsic pleasure the activity offers. This leads you to justify to yourself that you spent the time on the activity for the reward. Same goes for punishments "You spent doing the activity to avoid punishment".
However, the rewards can still give you resulution to stick to your goals. From personal experience I have been more productive on the time I used a system of goals focused on rewards and rewards withdrawal. It is my belief that I will always retain an intrinsic pleasure from art. Now this intrinsic pleasure can slowly grow over time, but with todays world and all it's competing distractions it will be a slow climb and much time will be wasted on trivia.
Using a goal system can give you that extra resulution you need to make the best of your time.
For me the most effective seems to be the "Do X amount of hours of drawing in 10 days" with a strong reward withdrawal if I dont make it. This is based on previous experience and collected data, thats when I was most productive.
However, the rewards can still give you resulution to stick to your goals. From personal experience I have been more productive on the time I used a system of goals focused on rewards and rewards withdrawal. It is my belief that I will always retain an intrinsic pleasure from art. Now this intrinsic pleasure can slowly grow over time, but with todays world and all it's competing distractions it will be a slow climb and much time will be wasted on trivia.
Using a goal system can give you that extra resulution you need to make the best of your time.
For me the most effective seems to be the "Do X amount of hours of drawing in 10 days" with a strong reward withdrawal if I dont make it. This is based on previous experience and collected data, thats when I was most productive.
Punishment.
An behavior shaping method that increases anxiety, lowers self esteem and effectiveness.
A common punishment to be wary of is to stop berating yourself. Be nice to yourself, positivity will get you a lot farther than negativity. You might want to give it a try if you are too comfortable and have a very positive stage of life, which makes you lazy.
A good counter to berating yourself is to get a rubber band around your wrist and snap it every time you catch yourself berating yourself. Another method is just pinching yourself. Replace the negative talk with the positive comments. Example: instead of berating yourself and comparing "im not as good as he" or "this looks crappy" replace them with good comments like "this part looks allright or "I nailed that color". Again for failures and mistakes, reframe them and see them as guides. Be objective about it, isolate the issues and practice. I've found that nowadays Im automatically going to fixing the mistakes instead of berating myself, this automatic process saves time and reduces stress a lot.
Verbal rewards, say "good line" or "nice value" etc. whenever you make something pretty.
Goals and a purpose
Smart goal guidelines.
1. Be specific in your goals, make them tangible. They must be measurable.
2. Be willing to sacrifice time and other activities.
3. Schedule for the intermediate and long term
Purpose
Base your purpose around your values.
What are your highest values?"hardworking, proffessionalism, intelligence, success."
Chunking.
"To take something specific up or down"
Proffesionalism chunked down: Self growth, a near mastery of a subject, a career in a subject, being disciplined.
Intelligence chunked down: A large knowledge of a subject likely even several subjects. A rational mindset. Good problem solving skills. Good planning skills.
Dont set goals that are in conflict with values.
Beliefs
Images power your beliefs. Doubt can exist in belief. Visualizing a belief will be calming.
List the outcome you want to achieve, then list qualities you have, as you list them, think about yourself and see if it would be possible for you to do that. Would you have the drive to do it? Look at your positive qualities.
Concentrate on your abilities to succeed, also use earlier achievements as concept of proof. Use the list whenever in doubt. Think about supportive actions and beliefs in a vivid bright way, for doubts use small grayish thoughts.
Sources of beliefs.
1. Surroundings. "The poor would be uncomfortable for suddenly being rich". Can you cope with the changes? Do you think you deserve the outcome? VIsualize the outcome and you with it, see the attributes of the image.
2. Intellect. Do you believe you are intelligent enough to achieve the outcome?
3. Experience.
4. Hopes and expectations.
Get a visual tangible representasion of your belief.
"Winning a large illustration award, you are in a large hall to pick up the prize" Imagine the goal and imagine yourself reaching the goal, the process of it.
Weaken doubt pictures and replace them with belief pictures.
If you have a belief that you are too lazy to reach your goal then make a visual representation of it and make it small fuzzy desaturated, lower the feelings and sounds. Slowly replace that image with a positive image with you studing/practice succesfuly, smiling at the thought of new knowledge gained, intensify. Feel joyous and happy. working.
"See yourself persisting, checking the phone to see how much time left you have to paint and then keeping up the work instead of taking a break. See yourself working until its time to take a break. See yourself preventing you breaking goals you set for you. Reinforce it by repeating this practice."
Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
A self directed work environment is more effective than someone yelling orders at you and standing over you.
Having a control over your actions and when you do things boosts motivation to do the things you do. If you have free productive time in a work environment, the things you do can yield great results
We like to get better at something. It gives us fulfillment and inspires us to keep going. We may even hit a breakthrough and thus get a surge of inspiration and vigorously pursue the activity. Enjoyment is also dictated by the creativity of the activity. We've all seen that some things are more tedious than others. We might even fall into comfort zones of these fun. This enjoyment based intrinsic motivation serves to keep us going, so it is important to make the activities you perform fun.
For example: In the latest still life I am working on I have to convey an ornate round box. The ornaments are many and measuring them all would be quite time consuming and tedious. Instead I kept my measurments quite basic, more like guides for the future design. And I approximated the intermediate parts, constantly checking them to reference points without active measuring. So, heres the fun part: I also started designing the ornaments, mostly on the small scale. I looked for appealing ways of conveying the ornament, what worked and what didn't. This added an extra dimension of creativity and complexity to the activity, thus increasing enjoyment.
We like our actions to have an impact. And once again being an artist serves this purpose well. As we get better our artworks start having impacts on people more and more so it ties in well with mastery.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Having a control over your actions and when you do things boosts motivation to do the things you do. If you have free productive time in a work environment, the things you do can yield great results
We like to get better at something. It gives us fulfillment and inspires us to keep going. We may even hit a breakthrough and thus get a surge of inspiration and vigorously pursue the activity. Enjoyment is also dictated by the creativity of the activity. We've all seen that some things are more tedious than others. We might even fall into comfort zones of these fun. This enjoyment based intrinsic motivation serves to keep us going, so it is important to make the activities you perform fun.
For example: In the latest still life I am working on I have to convey an ornate round box. The ornaments are many and measuring them all would be quite time consuming and tedious. Instead I kept my measurments quite basic, more like guides for the future design. And I approximated the intermediate parts, constantly checking them to reference points without active measuring. So, heres the fun part: I also started designing the ornaments, mostly on the small scale. I looked for appealing ways of conveying the ornament, what worked and what didn't. This added an extra dimension of creativity and complexity to the activity, thus increasing enjoyment.
We like our actions to have an impact. And once again being an artist serves this purpose well. As we get better our artworks start having impacts on people more and more so it ties in well with mastery.
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Allright that about covers the parts based on "The science of self discipline" and "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"
Additional notes.
-When working, make sure you are as comfortable as possible, even small discomfort can go a long way of wearing you down mentally. This has been one of my main setbacks I believe. My current setup allows me to draw around 7 hours before discomfort starts setting in from the strain. I can feel mild discomfort in my back and wrist. I've switched the setup around 4 times, seeing how the different combinations work. I also try to draw slowly and not draw with my wrist, but due to the tablet size I still slip sometimes and use my wrist.
-Draw right after you eat breakfast or a morning snack. What sets up a productive day is a productive morning. It is like a cornerstone of a building.
-Record your progress, keep those sketchbooks updated :)
-Health is important, get the best setup you can ergonomically, take regular breaks, the maximum drawing session should be 1 hour. Eat healthy. Stretch yourself.
-Dont overwhelm yourself. Isolate the issues in drawing and deal with them. Practice fundamentals, simplify things to make them more manageable then, once the simple things are in place, you can build on them.
-Pick your battles. It is wise to start with more challenging/tedious stuff in the morning, usually followed by an equally important exercise that challenges your weaknesses(however you like to practice this aspect more.) Dont push yourself too far with the tedious challenging stuff, it can leave a bad taste that makes it harder to work later on. Through trial and error you will gain the experience to balance things out for maximum efficency.
-Unify your work, try to hit 2 birds with one stone as much as possible. When you do accuracy, form, perspective, value and color studies have a personal piece you would like to finish as a basis for them.
-Keep something on your drawing table, something you find very appealing. Whenever you are relaxing or on an off day and not really doing any art, this object can get you turned once again to the path of drawing, it will increase your desire and doesnt require any effcort like visualizations.
-Experiment. Do this, with art, with goals and pretty much anything. You gotta try out new things and new ways of doing things.
Thats it for the short tips, next we will go more in depth into other useful aspects.
Self reflection.
You ever wonder on why you do certain activities? Perhaps you had an experience that caused you great sadness, how do you cope? Why did I do this? Why didn't I do that?
Questions like this are just few of many you should ask yourself and then ponder over the answers. In time you will make observations and realize your true values. Self reflection can help you understand yourself better and in doing so benefit future activities, provided you take action.
The aspect of quality
I feel I must also adress this when talking about productivity. Holding yourself to a high quality of standard requires much more effcort than you may be used to, but it is essential for improvement. Whenever you are drawing give it your best and hold yourself up to that standard. If theres any conceivable way to check for mistakes dont hesitate to do it, some ways may be tedious and take time, but they directly attack your hidden weaknesses. This is a widespread problem among novice artists. I was also doing this , but over the time I've started putting in more and more time into quality. It requires much more effcort, but is essential for improvement.
Ego depletion
"Willpower is a finite resource"
Every activity where we use conscious effcort or guidance depletes our ego, which in turn makes it more so that we give into our simple desires. Consuming media and sweet foods we give in and rest. Then we may berate ourself over this and promise to be more vigilant next time. If the ego is even more depleted we go into autopilot, zoning out infront of the TV for example.How to conserve willpower.
The best and fairly obvious thing to do is to PLAN. You need to change your environment or place restrictions on certain activities, better yet to remove temptations alltogether. Delete that video game you keep going back to. Disconnect from the internet. Dont wander around in stores, just go get the essentials. Look up on how much time does it take to watch 10 episodes of "Game of thrones"(if you're behind a season) then take an off day where you do it. Usually watching 1 episode and then having the rest just there creates a strong temptation that can be very depleting. Better yet is to not watch it alltogether, but it is a quality show so it feels wasteful.
What doesn't feel wasteful however is to stop watching all those cheap entertainment youtube videos. I am glad to say I kicked that habit by being without internet for a month. Now I see them for what they are a fun waste of time. The bad habit is gone and the distraction is severed, thus giving me more willpower reserves.
I'd say if you want to drop all those distracting habits go without the internet for a month aswell. And MAKE SURE when you get back you don't fall back into them.
Try it all
You gotta see what works for you, some studies might show that this or that method is ineffective or even counterproductive, but in the end you gotta see what works for you.
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Well I hope you enjoyed my article, I welcome any critiques/debates/discussions. Also share your own experiences and stories. If you have any questions feel free to ask.
And for those keen readers who can't get enough, I will leave some bonus articles that relate to productivity.
Lets start with a classic one, coffee. https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/22/coffee/
Sounds like an ultimate fighting move: Extinction Burst. https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/07/07/...ion-burst/
One of the most harmful mindsets you can have: Learned Helplessness https://youarenotsosmart.com/2009/11/11/...plessness/
I'll write something for this later: Procastination https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/...stination/
This is why you don't want to overwhelm yourself: Ego Depletion https://youarenotsosmart.com/2012/04/17/ego-depletion/
