Okay, here’s something I missed while I was in Italy.

I was sorting through emails and stumbled across the link to this video that Mankwe sent me back in July.

Mankwe, Aimee and Libby were members of the cast of the show I did last May (and again at the end of July) — As the Rhythm Changes. In a recent email, Mankwe referred to us as the “Change Chorus.” (How delightful!)

The video contains excerpts from two improvised pieces and the Change Ladies talking a little about improv. I love what Mankwe has to say about improvisation and being fearless.

Enjoy!

“It’s very scary to be a leader … this isn’t management. Management is telling people what to do a little faster than yesterday.

This is leadership.

Leadership is about opening doors for people to go places they didn’t think they could go before.”
– Seth Godin

I have been untethered from away-from-home work for the last two weeks and it’s wreaked havoc with my productivity. My sleep scheduled is all discombulated (I went to bed at 4:30 am Saturday night … er … Sunday morning) and I’m behind on several of my projects. (i.e. It’s 12:30 am as I write this blog post.)

…

My friend R tells the story of being asked in a job interview how he worked with deadlines. He replied, “Well, I don’t work very well without them.”

Amen.

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I’ve always believed that two kinds of deadlines exist — internal and external.

An internal deadline is a deadline I create for myself, i.e. I will finish the chart for such and such song by Friday.

An external deadline comes from someone else. It might be work for a client, a student or preparing for a rehearsal.

Somehow the only deadlines that really seem to motivate me are the external ones. I have to complete something for one of my jobs, or a rehearsal or a lesson, so I do.

Internal deadlines turn into target dates. They’re malleable and susceptible to procrastination. (After all, no one will come looking for me if I don’t write that chart by week’s end, so … )

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It’s something about the nature of tasks expanding to fill the time we have to do them and my own personal stubbornness about not doing something until I have to. Til some external circumstance requires me to.

Never mind that I feel guilty and stressed out when I get “behind.” Never mind that the work itself might only take an hour or an afternoon.

Never mind that if I had do the same work for someone else, I would do it and do it on time.

…

It is the commitments to my own work — practicing, performing, grant writing, marketing, etc. — that often get short shrift.

I’ll fritter way countless hours of my time until I only have time to work on the work I do for others because that’s all the time that’s left.

I find this pattern of mine endlessly frustrating, yet exceedingly difficult to change.

…

To be fair to myself, the built-in motivator with client work is that I get paid for it. There’s a direct link between the work I’m doing and a check to deposit.

There’s not nearly so direct a cause-effect relationship between my other work and my paychecks.

(Also, I know that the way to keep getting client work is to do good work on time.)

…

So I guess for me there’s only one kind of deadline. *rueful grin*

But rather than continuing to should all over myself about missing my internal dead … er … target dates, I’m working on noticing my actions around getting my work done. Seeing if I can uncover what works (and what doesn’t) and trying to be kind to myself in the process.

Since I know I can be responsible and hardworking with other people’s projects, I should be able to find a way to be the same kind of “employee” to myself.

Besides, who wants to work for a boss who is never satisfied? *wink*