An easy way to dive into your work tomorrow

I borrowed this idea from Twyla Tharp who borrowed it from Hemingway. In her book The Creative Habit, choreographer Twyla Tharp speaks about working on creative projects and how to segue into the next day’s work.

Many creative people burn to exhaustion. They fling themselves so utterly into what they’re doing that they frequently find they’ve left no obvious way forward. 

When they come back to their work the next day they find themselves in limbo. They’d spent themselves utterly. 

Tharp recommends bridging from one day to the next.

Work, but not until every last drop has been exhausted. Leave a few drops! Use Hemingway’s technique of leaving off at a point where you know where it’s still going. That way when you start up the next day you are in the middle of something you were finishing. Which draws you into the project.

Tharp calls it the Bridge. The way you move from one day to the next to the next without interruption. Without losing time and momentum. You create the habit of picking right back up and plunging in.

Now when I work on longer projects, like the bookito I’m engaged with, I leave a note at the point I left off indicating where I was heading. 

It’s a way of leaving crumbs for yourself to indicate the path forward. The crumbs may or may not take you very far, by then it doesn’t matter. You’re in the work! You’re in the project! You’re in. Ideas will come.