Substack System: I use this tracker daily — comment “system” and I’ll send it for free.
On My Radar: Carolyn Keesh is a creative genie
There comes a time in the day when we feel just done.
I call it the 4 o’clock slump.
You feel good for nothing, find yourself slowing and resistant to basic tasks.
There is still work to do. Yet as your energy deflates, your mood goes with it too.
Personally, this has been an ever present shadow in my working life.
And the trouble is, you know you could do it. Something just prevents you from even wanting to.
What's happened is you haven't just lost the energy for good work — your sense of meaning has drifted too.
Today's newsletter is short, because I want to hand you a simple system that's helped me get through this mid-afternoon paralysis.
Not only does it help me move life forward — it often flings me into a new rhythm, one where unexpected creative inspiration shows up right after.
Take 10 minutes of preparation before you start this.
You will be putting yourself on “manual mode”, so choosing the right tasks matters.
During that time, write down 8 tasks on a fresh bit of paper.
Then:
Set a timer for two hours.
Split it into eight blocks, fifteen minutes each.
Work one task per block. No breaks.
You are not going to question each task, and you are not going to negotiate with yourself.
This is about shuffling life forward, even when life itself is feeling resistant.
On the list I am specifically putting in shallow work.
Simple tasks are good — front loading it with potential easy wins even better.
With all this nonsense about work having to be difficult, this is about setting your mind to life and building momentum.
Here is an example of what might be on my list:
Clean the desktop
Email zero (each email gets max 2 mins)
Pay that one bill you’ve been ignoring
Empty the dishwasher
Book the ticket
File the receipts
Schedule the appointment
Clear the drawer
There is no browsing, scrolling or calls in this period. It is about a period of doing — of remembering in a moment of doom that, yes, you are a capable, functioning human being.
What I love about the 2hr session is that it is a time free of “wondering”.
None of these tasks take talent.
They just take the decision to get up and get at it.
The part of you that is prone to overthinking, wondering if you’re good enough, or going into a miniature black hole of regret is firmly boxed up.
Yes, sometimes there is nothing like attacking doubt with a concentrated period of doing
One of the reasons we get down or flat is because, as this mood creeps up on us, we get sedentary.
You need to move!
Whereas my mornings usually lock me into one position for a 3hr run of Deep Work, the point of my afternoon burst is specifically about buzzing around like a fly.
The very act of allowing myself to be skitty — moving from one task to another — gets my blood going.
And because I am zeroed in on one thing at a time, I am still free of the dilution that comes from multi-tasking.
Without fail, I am already starting to feel upbeat after 30 minutes.
Why?
Because the heaviness of an avoided task lifts — I am applying friction to stuck mind. In its place often comes a lightness of spirit.
Any readers of this newsletter know I am an advocate for being — and make something of an enemy of the grind boys.
Equally, this is a time of the day that I allocate for manual labour.
Not just because I want to be productive, but because it keeps me engaged in life.
So, there are no breaks allowed. It doesn’t matter if you’re tired, or resistant.
You need to remind yourself that you can do stuff when you don’t feel like it, and that you have the hardiness of spirit to lean back into the void when it’s biting you.
You have will power in you.
Apply it.
“Don’t expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make things happen. You won’t be. Don’t count on motivation. Count on Discipline.”
—Jocko Willink
Many of us carry the need for inspiration around like a weight. And the one thing that denies inspiration is always seeking it, as if it’s a right to receive it.
I like periods where I am entirely at peace with the lumpiness of me.
I am not trying to elevate myself, or improve, or touch something beyond myself.
I’m just giving myself over to whatever it is that life happens to be asking of me.
The crazy thing is that if you do this for two hours a day, two things happen.
First, you start winning the war with entropy.
Second, you piggyback your shallowness and it drops you at an unexpected place.
So often one of these 15 minute tasks triggers me into a period of concerted concentration that I never could have got to by actually trying.
I have a separate timer on my phone, because I use them all the time in parallel.
For instance, if I’m practising, one timer is on 1hr for my overall time period.
The other is for my 3 exercises, each lasting 3 minutes.
Trust me — just get a second timer!
This is the one I use - Kitchen Timer. Of all the bits of kit I’ve bought as a film maker and musician, those 13 bucks are about the best I’ve spent.
I’d also get this rechargeable AAA battery kit with it.
I consider myself a pretty hardy person, but when my timer dies, I feel like my day might as well be over.
Online everyone is obsessed with Deep Work and beating themselves up for their lack of concentration.
Yet shallow work is equally important, and a great tool in your armoury.
Working life — creative life — is a multifarious experience.
It includes low energy periods, and it contains a multitude of little things that often we would rather just not do.
More than that, we often don’t do these tasks because they feel beneath us. But the reality is that you need to keep life moving, and life asks us to do little unimportant things every day.
The 2hr system helps you utilise time when you’d be useless anyway — and to do smaller tasks guilt free.
Designating a period of your day for this, rather than avoiding it, is transformative first for your day, and then — in time — for your life.
As someone who often feels I'm wasting my potential when I'm making content — as opposed to practising, working or writing — I've found a secondary benefit to the 2hr system.
Once you’ve built it into your life, you suddenly find that your life is weirdly free.
Holy hell — I’ve actually achieved email zero….!
In this scenario, you can simply point the system to other areas of your life.
For instance, I will open my Substack Tracker and allocate an hour for Substack. The tracker gives me the four 15 minute tasks.
By doing this for a minimum 30 minutes, I’ve doubled my audience since last December.
And here’s the paradox: the driver hasn’t been the Deep Work of my weekly essay — it’s almost exclusively the Shallow work of using my daily slump.
Your shallow work drives the discovery of your work. Your deep work builds the readership.
For all the ways that the internet shouts at us about “motivation” — I think it is far more useful to think about how we respond when we are unmotivated.
For the record — it is entirely okay to feel so!
It is all too easy to feel like everyone else has everything figured out, and that you’re the only one feeling sad and stuck.
I have a period when I feel like this daily, and what’s helped me is first, accepting that, yes, it appears.
And second, having a structure that doesn’t require motivation.
That’s how the 2hr System helps me — far less about trying to be productive, and more about not losing a day to resistance.
It is essentially how I spring clean my mind on a daily basis.
When in doubt, keep it light, keep it fun — smash on the timer, and have FUN!
Let me know in the comments any thoughts or feelings that come up — I love to hear from you all.
Jim
You saw it above: when my life’s clear, I point the 2hr system at content. Two tools make that hour count:
The Tracker keeps me accountable and hands me the tasks
The Workstation streamlines my creative flow, so I get the most out of the hour.
Together they’re how I resolve the tension I always write about — between making art and making content.
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