We discuss the importance of prioritizing big goals and long-term creative projects over short-term tasks that seem to eat up the day.

Chris shares his personal experience of how prioritizing his creative work has led to significant changes in his life.

He encourages listeners to make time for their creative goals and not wait for someday.

Chris also highlights the importance of consistency, overcoming fear and judgment, and staying connected to the vision.

Takeaways

• Prioritize your big goals and long-term creative projects.
• Make time for your creative work, and don't wait for someday.
• Consistency and showing up are key to achieving your creative goals.
• Overcome fear and judgment to prioritize your creative projects.

Chapters

00:00 Prioritizing the Big Goals

03:14 Don't Wait for Someday

04:12 Making Time for Creative Work

06:03 Putting Big Goals First

07:25 Filling Your Own Cup First

08:47 Consistency and Showing Up

10:39 Making Time for Long-Term Goals

12:28 Overcoming Fear and Judgment

13:23 Prioritizing Creative Projects

14:22 Staying Connected to the Vision

16:20 Tweaking Attitude and Priorities

17:15 Continuing the Podcast

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The point that I heard on the podcast that I was recently listening to was about how to tackle the big stuff first. So I guess the topic came up where they were talking about if you have two things that you can do in a day, one of them is sort of the short-term tactical thing, let's say prepare for a meeting or do something else that's kind of like a short-term task. I can't really think of a good example, but I'm sure you can versus work on one of the long-term tasks or one of the kind of...

big goals that you have, you should always work on the big goal first. It's not to say that you leave the short term stuff to the side, but it is kind of shifting the priority. It is shifting the priority towards that long term vision that you have. And I know that for creative people, it's really easy to get lost in the day to day. It's really easy to get in a situation where whatever it is that you're trying to do, whether that's write a book or build a business or something like that.

It always gets pushed off to tomorrow because there's more immediate and pressing concerns. And part of having a creative vision and making that creative vision into reality is holding your ground. It is making the time in your life and in your day to prioritize the thing that you really wanna see happen and that's going to change your life over the long term. I can speak from experience that once I got into that mode of thinking, once I prioritize things like writing or working on the big...

stuff in my business, those things really started to change. So I wanted to share some thoughts with you on today's episode of the podcast about how and why you want to get to the big stuff first in your day. I'm Chris Waldheims. This is the Hypermemoir podcast where we've been talking about a lot of things, everything from finding creative voice to making your creative vision into reality and just about creativity in general. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I also share

a lot of my personal stories with you because I think that telling personal stories and sharing personal stories can really illuminate the creative journey for other people. So that's what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to pull together my personal experience, thus the memoir part, with the whole endeavor of being creative, the whole endeavor of creating something new in the world, which is what I want to see more people do. And I want to see more people.

share their stories with the world. Because I do believe that everybody has something to say, everybody has something to offer. It's just a matter of uncovering it and finding the techniques and the methods to get there. So I hope that by sharing my story, that gives you some light onto your story and how you might be able to turn your dreams into reality. So if that's also something that's interesting to you, if that's something that is compelling, there's also a mailing list.

and you can join the mailing list by clicking on the show notes here and subscribing. And I swear it's not annoying. It's a nice mailing list. I try to send useful stuff every week along with the podcast. Hopefully it's something that you all like. A lot of you seem to open it and read it and respond to it. So thanks for that. And then also those of you listening, if you have a moment, literally 20 seconds, I think you would probably need to do it. Leave me a review and rating on podcast.

Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're going to Listen to this. So let's get into the topic for today So the topic for today is really about prioritizing your creative goals. And when I talk about creative goals I'm not talking about just the short-term Everyday things that we're going to do but I'm talking about whatever that big long-term goal is. So if it's writing a book How do we prioritize that? How do we make sure that doesn't slip through the cracks? How do we make sure that?

everyday concerns, don't overrun it. And then what ends up happening is that sort of long-term thing that you planned ends up in the someday area. And I think you all know what I'm talking about where you have this thing that you want to do and you'll do it someday, but someday never comes. And we're always waiting for that time when we're not going to have any other responsibilities, when we have this really big block of time that we can just devote to our creative efforts and surprise, spoiler alert.

That never comes. That day never comes. The life keeps on happening. There is no break in life. So if you're looking towards some day today, you're going to be looking at some day a year from now. So you have to shift something. And this is what I found in my life. As I got into writing my book, and I'll explain a little bit more about my process there, but as I got into writing my book, I decided that I was going to write every day. And not only was I going to write every day, but I was going to prioritize it. Now,

It didn't necessarily mean that I was going to write a lot every day. Sometimes it was just even a hundred words or opening the document or shoot. Even if you write two words, you're making progress. Like, so if you think about your journey is a hundred thousand steps, if you make 10 steps, that's going to add up and you do that a hundred times. That's a thousand steps. All of it adds up. But what tends to happen is we have these lofty goals. We have these things that exist in our imagination that we want to turn into reality.

but then life gets in the way. So if we're like, okay, do I write or do I respond to this email that I just received? Too many of us go to, well, I'll respond to the email and then I'll write. But of course what happens is you respond to the email and another email comes or someone gives you a call or whatever and the momentum of the day kind of carries you through until you're at the end of the day when it's time to write and you're like, you know what, too tired, gonna watch Netflix and that's totally understandable. So my position and my advice to myself that I will share with you now is,

Put that stuff at the beginning of the day. Put the big goals at the beginning of the day. Don't try to clear the decks. Don't try to be like, well, after I do some emails, I'm gonna get to the big thing. Get right in there. And what that looks like for you might differ. I mean, for me, I like to exercise and meditate and get ready. So I'm not really doing it first. But what I am doing is I'm using the best energy and the first energy that I have to work on stuff. Now that doesn't always happen. I mean, this podcast is part of my long-term goal to build this and make it something really cool.

I'm recording this, I think right now we're looking at 3.30 PM. So I didn't do it first, but I think I've got enough reps in with creating that I kind of know that I can fit it in at a certain point. But if it was a competition between this and something else, I would try to favor this. And I think this conversation also goes back to the conversation that I was, or the monologue, I guess, that I was having in the second episode, which is about you don't find the time.

to do creative work, you actually have to make the time. And I really think that getting creative work done is all about attitude. It's all about being able to stand up for yourself and advocate for yourself and say, I'm doing this. This thing is happening. And yes, you all want me to do a certain thing and I'll get to it and I'm here for you. I'm here to be the employee or the business owner or whatever it is that you're doing. I'm gonna do all that, but I also have a vision and that's important to me.

So I'm gonna kinda say, you all step aside for a minute while I work on this, I'll be back. And ideally that thing that you work on is also something that's creating value for people around you. So I mean, you know, I communicate to the people around me that, hey, as I work on these creative projects, even if it's just me feeling more fulfilled and expressed, I feel better. I'm able to show up for people more knowing that I've taken care of myself. So it's kind of like filling up your own cup first, I guess would be the way that you hear a lot of people putting that. So...

But going back to that second episode of HyperMemoir, where I talked about, you don't find the time, you take it by force. So in that episode, as like, as talking about how people always say, well, I'd like to be a writer or I'd like to build a business, but I just can't find the time. As if it's some kind of spare change you find on the ground and magically you have the time. Or again, like you're looking at finding some huge block of time where you're gonna do it. Those may never happen. You may only get 15 minutes a day to work on your thing.

And in fact, when I worked on my initial book, the initial kind of draft when I was writing down everything, and I've talked about this before, I think I worked in 15 minute increments. So, and this was when I had a job and so I really couldn't prioritize it. I guess I could have, I could have woken up early, but I wasn't on that sort of path yet. Now I'd probably get up before work and do it before I even head out. But I'd get back from work and I'd write for 15 minutes. And so that was kind of my way of.

not just finding the time, but actually actively making the time. And again, it's not about how much you can make, but it's about making it and then doing it every day because a lot of these big creative frames, they require you to show up over and over again. And it's sometimes people talk about consistency, which is important, but it's also a consistency towards a goal, right? We're not just being consistent for the sake of it. We're actually knowing that if we want to build something lasting and it has an impact.

it is gonna take work and it is gonna take work over a sustained period of time. And one of the things I've even been noticing is that the people who tend to be successful now, and I see this with my clients that I work with as well, the people who tend to be successful are the people who have just, all they've really done is hung in there for a while. They kept showing up. They kept showing up and it's like, you know, a band that you hear about. They might be playing shows for years to five people until finally they blow up.

and become that overnight success where you hear about the overnight success, but you didn't see the 10 years of playing empty clubs for a decade. So maybe you get what I'm saying there, but it does kind of go back to this idea of prioritizing and building that habit, that creative habit of showing up. And we hear about it in so many different ways. And ultimately we're trying to make something new exist. So it's sustained effort. So we're working towards the big vision right now.

Which is also weird because as we sort of, one of the hard things about a vision and knowing that the goal is somewhere in the future is it feels really vague and attenuated. And I think I've talked on this podcast before about how to make your vision more real. I'll try to find a link or you can ask me what episode that is or just go back and see and you'll kind of see. I've talked about vision and how it's really important to take it from this vague thing of someday I'll be a published author to what does that look like and what does it feel like?

And then once you get to that, then that kind of makes it more concrete. And then you can take the steps today that you need to take to make that a reality in the future. But still, even if you do that, it does feel attenuated. It does feel like, um, is this going to happen? Is this kind of pointless? And you have to go through that. Now you have to go through that period of, um, what I'm doing is dumb. What I'm doing sucks. What I'm doing isn't going to matter. I've gone through that. Maybe none of you have that experience, but I have. And it's really just a matter of not listening to that voice or that inner critic and still showing up.

in making it important, by the way, because there might be people in your life or it might be yourself who's going to tell you that your big dream, give up on it, focus on the things that you're supposed to do. And so there is a little bit of an element of kind of being punk rock about it where it's like, I'm gonna set the priorities. And it does take time to get there. I'm not saying that, you know, if you're not used to doing that, that you should be able to just snap into it, but you can develop that skill over time. Some people, what they do is they will schedule a meeting with themselves.

at that time. I mean, all of us, if we work, if we've been in working life, you're familiar with meetings. You know that if there's a meeting, you kind of drop everything. You're like, hey, I can't do it right now. I've got a meeting. Or, got to run. I have a meeting. We're all very conscientious about meetings with other people because we want to make sure that we're upholding our obligations to people around us. Same thing with us. I mean, I think that if you have a job where you could do it, create a meeting for yourself in the middle of the day. Be like, you know what? I'm going to take half an hour and write.

And if someone asks me, I'm in a meeting. Yeah, it's a meeting with yourself, but we're treating it with that same level of care and that same level of conscientiousness that we treat meetings with other people. So that's another way that you might be able to do it. Yeah, and I think it's also easy to put off long-term goals. I know that I've had this experience when there's a lot of fear involved. I know that for me, it's less fear of failure.

and maybe more fear of success or fear of what changes or fear of what problems happen or hey, shoot, it might even be fear of judgment, right? So like for me, there's also fear of judgment that someone's gonna read what I write or see what I do and think it's stupid or think it sucks and I let that kind of create this fear in me. It's never happened and if it does happen, I can handle it. But the point is, is as a creative, it's much easier to focus on the small things that are happening day to day that might not contribute to your overall.

long-term vision. It's much easier to say, well, you know, I'm really busy and I'm getting a lot of stuff done. I did the Excel spreadsheets and I went to the meeting and I answered the emails and all this other crap that seems so important in the day to day. But when you pull out a year, you're like, oh, nobody's going to give a shit if I answered all my emails last year. Like that's just another, you know, it's another thing that goes bye-bye. But what you are going to care about is if a year from now you've been showing up relatively consistently, you're like, wow, I wrote a book.

or I built a business or I started a podcast and now I'm at episode 50, whatever it is, that's the kind of thing that's really going to stick, which is why I'm saying it's so important to prioritize those big goals, which for a lot of people, again, is counterintuitive, which is why a lot of people, they have these dreams that they want to see happen and they don't happen. Not a criticism, no shade or anything like that on them, but I think that that's the way that society is set up. Society wants you to...

adhere to the rules that wants you to do the thing that society wants you to do, which isn't always being creative. And so in order to get that creative time, you do have to assert yourself in a way that you might not be used to. And I know that when I started my creative journey, I wasn't used to either. So, yeah, I think it's really about showing up for yourself and showing up for your creative project and making those a priority, making the long term. And I think this is the key. So it's not just

about showing up for your creative projects, but it's about showing up and making that long-term vision into reality. Because the coolest thing, and I wanna talk about this again in another episode, one of the coolest things I've seen is how you can have a vision. Like you can close your eyes and have a vision. And I'll talk about this more because I really do have a lot to say about the topic of how you create a vision and really live into it. But what's really cool is when you have a vision, and I've had this experience, you have a vision, you're like,

I want this thing to happen. I want this thing to exist. And you work and you work and you work towards that long-term goal. And you spend all this time like I'm out in the wilderness. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if this is a good idea. This is stupid, blah, all the internal dialogue that we always have. But then you get it done. And I felt that way, you know, after I finished my book, after I finished the entire manuscript, I'm holding in my hand. I went on blurb. It's like an online printer print on demand service.

I just took the PDF, uploaded it and printed it out, sent it to myself and I'm holding in my hand a completed book and that was magical because that was something that I had in my vision. So I kept that in my vision, like holding a completed book. How does that feel? How does the cover feel? How does it feel in my hands? How does the weight feel? And when I got to that moment of holding it, it's almost like, I wish I could describe exactly what it is, but it's like, it's just a magical feeling to have that thing done. So...

it's really important to stay in touch with the vision and know that it is all worth it. So I hope that what I said today helps. I hope that if you're listening to this, you have a creative project and you're putting it off and putting it off, and you're like, I have so many things I need to do, how can I possibly ever make progress on this? Or I'll work on this after all the short-term stuff is done, but it never seems to happen. I hope this helped. I think that there's a lot of people I've talked to who...

are like, yeah, wouldn't it be nice if you could do that? And, you know, I'm not saying blow off your responsibilities because, you know, I'm also a business owner, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a family member, I'm a dog owner, I have all these other things that I have to do just to maintain. And so it's, you know, I wanna make it clear that all the responsibilities that you all have, I have too, it's just a matter of attitude and tweaking our attitude a little bit to prioritize our creative activities. And by the way,

Another priority is deprioritizing things that leak your energy and leak your time, like social media. Love social media, but if we have 15 minutes to look at Instagram, we have 15 minutes to work on our dreams. Anyway, I'm going to leave it all there because I don't want to go into other tangents, but I will say this. If you enjoyed this podcast, I'm not just going to try, I am going to expand it. I am going to create more episodes. I'm doing this every week because for me, it's about showing up.

I'm really trying to practice what I preach, which is, you know, no matter what else I have going on, this is Wednesday afternoon, middle of the week, there's things going on. I took half an hour to record this because I think it's important and I think it should continue. And I hope that it helps you. And I love hearing from all of you who have emailed me or messaged me to say that something I've said has resonated with you. I got a really cool email from someone about an episode I recorded and posted, like I think in July. And this person was telling me, you know, that

what I had said in that episode, brought up some old stuff that related to his father and his father's experiences. I think that I was talking about, you know, how you can explore darkness in your family history. And this person had messaged me and it really resonated with them. And so, you know, for any of these episodes, if only one person has that reaction, then for me it's a win. So that's why I keep doing this. And so if you've enjoyed it, please leave a rating and review or send it to a friend even.

because the more people who listen, the more chances I have and we have to help people and help them be more creative and actually create things in this life that we have. So I'm Chris Valtimes. This was the Hypermemoir podcast. Thank you for listening and I'll see you again in a week when I do the next one.