Sunday Mālama: Morning Pages, Artist Dates and Rhythm

Preface ~ If this is your first visit to Managing with Aloha Coaching, you can read of our intention with Sunday Mālama here: Sunday Mālama: A Beginning. A trackback there will easily help you return here.

If you are a writer who has dreamed of one day having a literary life, you know of Julia Cameron. You also know of the two writer’s tools she is recognized for encouraging; Morning Pages and Artist Dates.

If you are not a writer, please keep reading. Ms. Cameron’s advice is absolutely golden for managers as well; I coach people to incorporate her tools into their own practice nearly as much as I coach my own Daily Five Minutes®, for what they deliver is not necessarily prose-perfect writing, but released creativity.

When you believe you have a calling for management, you know that what you do is a gift for those you manage, and you treat it that way. You think of the expression of your work as both science and art. The full expression of your management art requires tapping into the creativity that may be dormant inside you, for people must be managed as individuals; you create your management art anew with each person who newly becomes your charge.

Morning pages and artist dates were first presented in Cameron’s seminal book, The Artist’s Way. They are briefly explained on her website;

“The morning pages are three pages of stream-of-consciousness longhand morning writing. You should think of them not as "art" but as an active form of meditation for Westerners. In the morning pages we declare to the world—and ourselves—what we like, what we dislike, what we wish, what we hope, what we regret, and what we plan.

By contrast, the artist dates are times for receptivity, preplanned solitary hours of pleasurable activity aimed at nurturing the creative consciousness. Used together, these tools build, in effect, a radio set. The morning pages notify and clarify—they send signals into the verdant void; and the solitude of the artist dates allows for the answer to be received.

The morning pages and artist dates must be experienced in order to be explained, just as reading a book about jogging is not the same as putting on your Nikes and heading out to the running track. Map is not territory, and without reference points from within your own experience, you cannot extrapolate what the morning pages and artist dates can do for you.”

In her interviews and subsequent books, Cameron has repeatedly said that those who would be writers grasp the intent of the Morning Pages easily, and the question is if they will indeed have

a) the discipline to make them their habit and daily rhythm, and

b) the patience to permit the “garbage writing” that can result, to be part of their energies spent before any real publishing happens for them.

What is harder for her would-be writers, are the Artist Dates. Cameron explains that “Work is the problem. Play is the solution.” She feels that we understand work better.

“ … most of us have learned very well how to keep our nose to the grindstone, how to make our days gray, drab, and colorless … [for instance] to do Morning Pages, people must get up even earlier, restructure their day, marshal their energies, and march to the page. In my experience, people do Morning Pages easily, even eagerly. We do, as I have said, understand work.”

However …

“The second primary tool of a creative recovery involves play. Oh, this tool is hard to master. Dubbed an “Artist Date,” this second, essential tool involves a once-weekly, solitary, festive expedition targeted at enticing our inner artist into exploring new realms. Students who willingly rise at five-thirty to take to the page balk, cavil, whine, and rebel at the prospect of taking in say, a solo movie, a visit to an art supply shop, a trip to the park, a jaunt to Chinatown.”
—The Artist’s Date Book, A Companion Volume to The Artist’s Way

Well, for managers both are hard, both the work and the play.

No matter how much I might explain why they need both components in their manager’s toolbox, selling the benefits of each until they drool for them, and no matter how much they might truly agree with me in theory, getting them to do morning pages and artist dates is harder than getting them to do the Daily Five Minutes® — and unlike the conversation collaboration of the D5M, these two are tools they can use and employ totally on their own.

There is a self-discipline that is required in starting anything that is new, and in sticking them out until the benefits are revealed to you. The discipline is necessary for our habit creation — and there are good habits to be cultivated, not just bad habits! Then, that golden day happens where you don’t think of it as a habit at all, but as a very pleasing rhythm that moves you through the better parts of your days, nights, weeks, months and years.

This is always the goal for me in the coaching I do, whether with individual managers or with leadership teams; creating a productive rhythm that will work for them in their own practice of the Managing with Aloha sensibility for work.

I may never be your personal coach, but as your virtual one of this Sunday’s Mālama, I encourage you to use these three tools for the very pleasing rhythm you begin to move to, as a manager working on his or her creative art;

• Morning Pages for your creative Work
• Artist dates for your creative Play
• The Daily Five Minutes® for your Communication with others (in both Work and Play)

Be willing to indulge yourself with those first two so that you can be the more creative manager who gives more, and thus works better.

Managers must be planners: In regard to the Morning Pages, focus on this part of the quote I shared with you: “In the morning pages we declare to the world—and ourselves—what we like, what we dislike, what we wish, what we hope, what we regret, and what we plan.”

My own favorite Artist Dates are spending entire afternoons or evenings in a bookstore, going to the farmers’ market early on weekend mornings, and visiting community gardens. However to keep them from getting routine, I don’t frequent the same haunts, and when I’m home I’ll take some pretty long drives to find new ones. I spend a lot of time indoors, and all the traveling I do is best described as efficient and not leisurely. Therefore, other than the fact that I could pitch a tent in a bookstore and be happy, I will usually look for outdoor, place-connected options for my Artist Dates.

I visited a farmer’s market just yesterday, and came home with an answer I have struggled to find over most of the past week in regard to one of my client projects. My next step in coaching them better suddenly became so very clear to me as I had my senses bombarded by the offerings of a lavender farmer.

Mālama yourself; commit to the habit creation of these three tools, and get into rhythm. For those of you reading who have started these practices, please do share your ideas, suggestions and experiences in the comments with us!

Footnotes and Links which may be helpful;

1. More on the The Daily Five Minutes® may be found here: MWA Success Stories! The Daily Five Minutes®
2. Julia Cameron’s website is www.theartistsway.com, and the descriptions of her Morning Pages and Artist Dates were taken from this page.
3. Here are the links to her books mentioned: The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, and The Artist’s Date Book, A Companion Volume to The Artist’s Way
4. Do focus on the stream-of-consciousness coaching of the Morning Pages. The next suggestion takes writing skills a bit further, however do not confuse the two, and consider it additional reading ...
5. I believe that every manager must incorporate writing as a skill into their craft, and I have written about it before here: Writing is a Skill the Successful Master. It explains the distinction I make between writing to write, writing to capture, and writing to learn.

Comments

[dave]

Serendipity strikes again Rosa! I must tease and dangle a clue in front of you. Though I'm not one for intriguing riddles and you'll figure it out before you finish reading this. It involves a woman, a thousand words a day and charming little notes. The teasing part is the period of time you'll have to wait until I tie this connection together at my site. But, as you are still sleeping now, it might not be that long :-)

You know how I feel about all this management stuff. You might be pleasantly surprised and proud to know that I got the rhythm. In the beginning I carried the complete five something foot, one hundred pound something Rosa on my shoulder. As the daily five minute practice became more routine, you shrunk in size. You are no longer on my shoulder but have taken up permanent residence on a comfortable chair in my mind's reading library. (Just so you know, you're wearing reading glasses).

To those who ponder Rosa's words here...Morning Pages and Artist's Dates work. It is nice to have a college degree. But, over the course of your career, you will obtain more value from practicing Morning Pages, Artist's Dates and the Daily Five Minutes than a barrel full of college degrees.

I make it a strict habit to pack a notebook and camera on all artist's dates. Actually, I never leave the house for any occasion without the two.

[Rosa Say]

Ah yes Dave! Another of my writing muses, Carolyn See with her thousand pages and charming notes! Gotta share for those who don’t have her book: “I strongly suggest that in addition to your thousand words a day, you write one charming note to a novelist, an editor, a journalist, a poet, a sculptor, even an agent whose professional work or reputation you admire, five days a week, for the rest of your life. Then, after you write the note, you address it, put a stamp on it, and mail it out. Those notes are like paper airplanes sailing around the world, and they accomplish a number of things at once ” ~ Carolyn See in Making a Literary Life, page 40-41

She does subscribe to the cadence of discipline and rhythm! She has these two phrases in italics: five days a week, for the rest of your life. And I love her how and why: “They salute the writer in question. They say: Your work is good and admirable! You’re not laboring in a vacuum. There are people out the world who know what you do and respect it. The notes are also saying: I exist too. In the same world as you. Isn’t that amazing? They can also say: Want to play? … These notes are just notes. You don’t want to burden some poor wretch with the entire story of your life. You absolutely don’t want to ask them a favor … Don’t offer to go and live with them … Be gracious. You’re entering into an emotional and spiritual courtship with the literary world that will last the rest of your life.”

I admit I am not in her weekday rhythm though; for me charming notes are a weekend affair – a wonderful way to keep the feeling of my artist date with me! At other times I cheat by commenting on blogs, knowing that bloggers so appreciate discovering that someone “out there” is reading! But See is right, the actual mailing of something is what gives it weighty emotional punch, both for sender and receiver. In today’s world, your handwriting and a stamp represents priceless attentions.

Dave I like the toolKIT we are assembling here! Pen and paper, a camera (but unlike me, once you remember to bring it, you have to actually use it …) ready supply of first-class stamps, and sunglasses to make those artist dates official!