 To be creative, should you just go with the flow or schedule out your day? So this depends a lot on your relationship to deadlines because essentially a schedule is a series of deadlines with yourself or with other people, right? And I think a lot of creative people and spiritual people can tend to have a murky or resistant relationship to deadlines and schedules. Can be avoidant about due dates and schedules and therefore not schedule out Wednesday. And let me give you a different way of thinking about a schedule. So up to now, perhaps you have thought about scheduling and deadlines as well. Just like the word suggests, dead lines. So there's a sense of dread, a sense of anxiety, and it's not a positive experience to think of deadlines. But what if I'd like to call it scheduled flow? Let me explain. So basically, I do schedule out my day because I've noticed that if I don't schedule out my day, what happens? Well, maybe you can tell me. What happens when you don't schedule out your day? When I go with the flow, it's too easy for me to do things that are very easy, that are fun. And things that for me are fun are oftentimes not very productive and move my business forward. And so in even creating for me is not fun at the start. Have you noticed that? I don't know if that's true for you. But for example, when I when I write, I don't enjoy writing. But as you may have may know, I've written several books now and I write on a regular basis. So how come I write so much, even though I don't enjoy writing? Well, because I have come to understand that the first period of writing, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, sometimes even 25 to 30 minutes, the first period of writing is not fun for me. I understand that by now. It is a struggle. But the difference is I don't suffer during the struggle. I have learned or I practice rather stepping back like witness consciousness. I step back and I see myself struggling, so called with with the writing. And I basically reparent myself to say, it's OK. Just try writing a few bullet points of what you might say here. Just write writing a few words. It's OK. It's all going to be OK. And so even my struggle, I have refrained it not as suffering, but as growth, as powerful and joyful, even joyful growth. Joy, to me, is very deep experience and not very different from happiness, which is a surface level of pleasure. Joy is, to me, the experience of growing personally. To me, that's deep joy, my goodness. So when I can when I can work differently with the struggle on a creative project, the beginning of it, I can then feel the deeper joy in the growth and therefore stay with that process. And I stay past the struggle period, which again, for me, in writing is 15 to 30 minutes. And after the struggle period, I now see something shaping up and I can now shape the writing in a direction that seems hopeful. That seems like I can actually produce something here. What about you? I don't know what kind of creative project you're working on, whether it's art, writing, even making videos. My goodness, I never feel like showing up to make videos. Did you think I I love looking at myself and I love hearing myself and I love just going on live because I'm so handsome and what? No, right? I probably like a lot of you. I don't like showing up on video either. I don't enjoy it, at least for the first period. The first, well, see now, you could see I'm kind of in the flow now. But for the first, what, three minutes, I was struggling. I wasn't suffering because I was practicing showing up anyway. I was practicing showing up with as much love and courage as I can. So that practice itself is a deeply joyful experience. But again, so that's what I mean by scheduled flow is to schedule out our day knowing that if I don't, I don't get barely anything done in a day. So I need to schedule up my day to about the half hour increments. And whatever my schedule says, I show up for it because I respect my assistant called the calendar. I don't have any assistance, but I do have assistance. They're called the calendar, the to-do list, right? Those are my faithful, gentle assistants. So my assistant, the calendar says, hey, it's time to write. And I I do my energy reboot. I talk about that a lot. If you don't know it, just Google energy reboot. Google it and you'll find my video. I do my energy reboot for 30 seconds and then I show up and I flow within the task. So I'm not allowed to go and surf Instagram for half an hour or watch YouTube videos for 45 minutes. Sometimes I'll do it for like, you know, check my email for three minutes or surf Instagram for two minutes. But I'm very conscious that it's just a little buffer before I get into the creative struggle, the creative discomfort. And so it says to write. OK, now I'm going to show up, reparent myself, witness consciousness, and I'm going to joyfully struggle through the beginning period of creativity. So I come out the other side and I can see something, some some project coming through now. So all right, scheduled flow is basically to do what you schedule, but to show up with with a kindness toward yourself and to flow within that task. As long as I'm writing, I don't care about the results. That's very key. And I'll end with this. I don't care about the results in the short term. I don't care what happens in this hour of writing. I just know that I'm going to publish something at the end of this hour. That's all I know. That's all I know. So I publish something crappy. That's fine, because I know that if I keep showing up with the practice of gentleness and practicing the skill, I naturally get better over time, right? Same with you. If you keep showing up to practice, you keep getting better over time and getting better over time means that your results will also naturally get better over time. So that's all for me today. I'm George Cow. I hope this is helpful and I wish you a joyful productivity for the rest of your day. Take care.