There is value in that idea.

But sometimes I’ve found this alternate version far more helpful:

If a job’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing badly.

There are days when doing the next job well feels impossible. Even starting feels hard. When it comes to motivation, sometimes we have to lower our targets. There’s few things as off-putting as feeling we’re expected to achieve an impossible target, and we’re not talking here about the reality of our ability – just how we feel about it.

And the real-life paradox is that our second or third best is almost always good enough.

The thing is, fear of failure can totally paralyse you.

One of our sons joined the selective school where I was teaching. He seemed to be having a good time, doing okay, though I deliberately didn’t pry. Then in the summer term he seemed to fall apart. And finally I got it. We had exams each summer for all year groups. He was in a competitive environment. I asked him how well he expected to do. Didn’t know. What were we expecting him to achieve? Don’t know. Neither do we, I said; we’re just going to wait for the results, and then we’ll know what you can do.

At once he relaxed. Am impossible target with unknown repercussions for failure had been removed. And it was all the more frightening because he hadn’t even known what the target was.

There are a couple of old posts relating to this: here and here. They’re in a series ‘Effective Goal Setting’. And that second link has a recent cartoon fragment in its full environment.

Trick 4

How well do you think you need to do? Identify that ambition which is holding you down and ditch it. Today you feel rough, so things just aren’t going to be that good. You can always come back on a good day and fix things. All you have to do for now is do the job badly. It’s okay. You can always take the ambition back on board when you’re having a good day.

Trick 4.1

It can be hard to ditch a target or an ambition. Try recalling other times when you’ve felt like this, managed to get started, and been surprised by how good the result was. Recall times when you thought you’d really fouled up, yet people you trust told you how good you were. Feel just a little optimistic Go on, you know you want to.

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The solution can be simple (unless there are major other factors such as clinical depression). Just do it badly.

Let me give an example. Currently I’m writing the novelette file-named Ted. It’ll be about 30,000 words. Some days I just feel I’ve no idea what to write next, and anyway if I did write it would be rubbish. I’ve managed to get myself into a routine which solves the problem, based on the mantra: it doesn’t matter how bad it is. The policy is to write at least 500 words a day, six days a week. At that rate it’ll take 60 days, which is 10 weeks (with one day to recover each week). And I’m just writing, not editing, not rereading, not worrying how good it is just so long as I finish. Then I can think about improving it. No matter how good it is I’ll be able to improve it.

And it’s working. In the last five days I’ve written the following numbers of words (compared with target 500): 753, 844, day off, 535, 1315. Yesterday was weak. Really ill the night before, felt rough. Managed to get up to watch some early-evening TV, and decided to tap away at the notebook while watching. No idea if it’s any good, but I got the 500 done.

This method links in with what I said about brainstorming here, and about just starting, here.

Ted A 004a.docx is now 8172 words.

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Get everything down on paper first, then edit. You'll be surprised at the results.

It’s been a week of Jenny having flu and me having similar symptoms but not so bad. And the other morning I found myself sitting in the hall with the front door open and sun washing over my feet; it was too hot sitting in the porch.

On my lap was an A4 pad, in my hand a pencil, and I started scribbling ideas for the Ted book.

The first trick with brainstorming is to note everything down without comment. If you start editing too early, start rejecting ideas as soon as they surface, your sub-conscious gets all sulky and says, “Well if you’re going to make fun of my suggestions, get lost.” And that’s the end of good ideas for that session. Brainstorming is like dreaming: just go with it and enjoy.

The second trick is to keep going quite a bit longer than you think you can. Some people suggest sticking at it until you’ve got at least 20 ideas down. Some say twenty minutes. I allowed myself to stop when the sheet was full of scribble with lines connecting related bits. Looked like I’d done a lot of crossing out, a bit like a spider’s web, but it’s all still there.

I like working to music, and having just downloaded (paid for!) the Xx album which won the UK Mercury Awards this month, guess what I was listening to.

Having finished I wished I’d used one of our plain A3 pads and done my version of a Mindmap. Mine aren’t as neat as Tony Buzan’s, but they work. Used to get my form to help me create a Mindmap on the board sometimes in Tutor lessons, when we felt like doing my version of PSE. Or is it PSHE? Or even PSCHE? Actually Civilian and Health are obviously included under Personal and Social Education, but the bleeding hearts people do love to fuss over changing terminology.

Anyway I’ll need to do a bit more planning, but I like the result. The previous novel Sunken Star, currently at 130,000 words and to one side while I finish the far shorter Ted, was written in the trial and error let’s just write and find out what happens mode. It needs brutal editing. Whereas now I feel far more at ease with Ted. It will probably be about 30,000 words when finished, with a fair number of Miriam’s cartoons. It will need editing, but if I’m lucky the basic structure will be good without too much hacking.

That’s one of the things that surprises people about writing a novel: the amount you have to be prepared to either rewrite, or junk completely.

So yes, I’m glad I did the brainstorming session. Though it would have been more fun and more productive with one or two friends. Trouble was, Jenny was in bed with flu, and I didn’t feel well enough to go out.

Latest position is Ted A 003d.docx 5,478 words.

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I really can't be bothered (part of a 'Uses for a maths teacher' cartoon by Miriam Slechter

Do you ever have days when nothing feels worth starting and everything is shades of grey? Days when the sun doesn’t shine, and getting out of bed is the hardest thing you’ve ever done? Periods when the smallest chore becomes an impossible task?

Well of course you do. You’re human.

I remember someone telling me that as a youngster he worried he’d inherited chronic depression from his Mum. Later at university he discovered that everyone feels down for a few days at a time, now and then. It’s normal.

Actually feeling like this in adolescence (call that ages 12-25 ) is common. The hormones are rampantly badly mixed, the challenges of life are to be faced without as yet the desired rewards. Who am I? What do I believe? What will I do with my life? How do I succeed? Am I happy? Do people like me? Does she love me?

I get this feeling of lethargy and inertia far more often, and sometimes far more severely, than people without clinical depression. But it’s basically the same feeling. Over forty five years I’ve had many tricks suggested to me. I’ve tried them out, and discovered other possibilities too. This series will be the things I have found work. For me. Often enough to be worth trying.

I’ll be including a mixture of quick, medium, and long term tricks. They won’t all suit you, but some will.

Imagine you are at the top of a hill and the enemy approaches. You need to roll that boulder down onto them. But at first it won’t shift. These will be tricks you can try that might get the boulder started rolling.

Miriam’s picture? Yes we know verticals should look vertical even in a cartoon, but it makes sense when you see the whole picture.

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The car window was as open as it will go.

Was that a siren?

No. Because it stopped. But it was followed by more noise. Like someone talking through a cheap pa system.

It was someone talking, a pre-recorded message.

The message is above as title to this post. It kept repeating. The hazard lights of the moving bus were flashing, so this was probably not a prank. 999 is the number we in Britain ring for the emergency services. Unfortunately apart from it being illegal to use my phone while driving, I didn’t have it with me.

Okay so that’s weird, but there was more.

There were many pedestrians near the bus. Most people apart from me carry their mobile phone everywhere; it’s more important to them than their front door key.

But I could see not one person making a phone call.

It reminded me of the time when I was about nine and on the way from school to catch a bus home. In those days schools didn’t lay on special buses, and kids were expected to walk to the bus stop. I turned a corner into the main road and there at one side of the footpath (sidewalk) lay an adult, apparently unconscious.

All sorts of thoughts went through my mind. Clearly I had to do something. But what? At that stage I had no first aid training. Should I phone the police? What if it was a hoax, maybe Candid Camera? And why was everyone else just walking past? They were adults and therefore obviously knew more than me about how to react and stuff – I changed my mind on that within a few years.

So what was going on? Mainly two things. Firstly everyone was doing the same as me, assuming someone else more able would deal with the situation. Secondly we all kept walking because everyone else kept walking.

And the frightening thing is that most of us behave like that most of the time.

There has been a case of a girl being beaten up and killed on the street. The murder was clearly visible, and noisy enough that many neighbours looked out to see what was happening.

Yet not one rang the police.

Were they in shock, or did each one assume everyone else would be ringing?

There was what may have been a reverse example of this recently in Germany. During a Love Parade last Saturday at Duisberg nineteen people were killed when a crowd ‘panicked’. Apparently when the venue became overfull police tried to stop any more people entering, but at the other end of a tunnel they didn’t know what was happening and presumably (I don’t know) just started pushing impatiently.

Something similar happened at the Hillsborough football ground in 1989. You can find a summary of events, as far as they’re understood, here. I sometimes feel quite angry at the idiots trying to get in who decided to push, but then I wonder how I might have behaved had I been there. Some of the people trying to get in had been drinking. Maybe someone influential in the crowd shouted ”What’s the hold up? Let us in or we’ll shove our way in!” (I omit adjectives). Maybe someone else wanting to impress said alpha male decided to start shoving, and others in the group thought, this is a laugh, and I’m fed up of waiting, so let’s all push. Once enough people are pushing you have to be pretty strong-willed and self-assured not to join in. At the very least you keep your mouth shut.

So at Duisberg did we have people keeping their mouths shut during those few seconds between stupidity starting and it getting out of control, leading to panic elsewhere? It would be understandable. Everyone decided to leave it to someone else more capable of taking charge. And how many people panicked without knowing why just because they thought other people were panicking?

Basically we’re all irrational.

But sometimes it would be good if we remembered our weaknesses, so here are a some rules to go on with:

1.  The crowd is often wrong, so check whether their response really makes sense.

2.  Don’t look to see what other people are doing. Think it through and make your own mind up. Be an individual.

3. Everyone else is waiting for you to act, so if there’s something helpful you can do, do it. Emergency services would rather have a hundred calls than none.

Remember, the total IQ of a crowd is in single figures. Even a moron has an IQ over 50.

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No, actually that is the wrong question. Knowing where something comes from doesn’t make it accessible; we’ve just had a mild drought and knowing where rain comes from didn’t help.

In June 1965 Paul McCartney recorded what was arguably to become the most successful song of all time, Yesterday. Accounts differ, but he says that crucial parts of the melody came to him in a dream. He got up and made sure he didn’t forget it. Then of course the work began. They needed words  – Scrambled Eggs was fun but hardly fitted the bill. Which instruments would be right for it?

Now there’s a possibility. Could dreams be a good source for ideas? Absolutely, but with provisos.

I’m writing this today because last night I had a dream.

Sort of.

I’m working on a novel provisionally called ‘Sunken Star’. It’s almost complete, but a year ago I put it on one side because I needed some distance before finishing it. Recently I’ve been working through the draft making changes, making it consistent. The opening is still wrong because it’s too slow, but the problem was the ending. Why do certain characters take the actions they do? Would I have to drastically alter the plot before it would work?

And there I was at 3 am asleep with my thoughts turning to this problem. At a guess I was on the edge of waking up, but I wasn’t awake. What you need to do, I thought, is write down the exact questions you want answered. Then brainstorm possibilities. No problem, I thought, the main question is why does he do that? Why? Well, obviously …

I had a complete solution.

Trouble is we forget most dreams.

I played with the ideas in my mind, held them up against scenes I’d already written. They worked. They felt right. It would be good to write something down, but for that I needed to be awake. Ah well, hold on to those thoughts if you can. I was in what I call the twilight of sleep, that extraordinary transition between sleep and wakefulness which alarm clocks tend to deny us. I allowed myself to drift. There was a recurring theme everyone is familiar with, the feeling that it would be nice to visit the bathroom. Finally I woke enough to act, and the ideas were still there so I was able to nip into the study and jot them down.

Now of course comes the work. Writing a novel is one per cent inspiration, ninety nine per cent perspiration. Typing 150,000 words into a computer is hard work, and when you finish what you have is a first draft. You’ll have typed more like 200,000 before you get it near enough right. And all the time you have to reassure yourself it’s worth the effort.

Yes I find dreams can be a marvellous source of ideas, and I’m not alone. Kekulé said he came up with the idea that Benzene molecules have a ring structure while daydreaming, perhaps half asleep; he dreamed of a snake biting its own tail. I often find the most productive part of studying a text book is when my mind wanders, mixing bits of what I’ve just read with all sorts of other things.

So are there ways to get the most out of dream ideas? I think so. Here’s my list. It’s a first draft, so please add your own ideas.

Dreams are rarely literal

Kekulé didn’t think that since he’d dreamed it Benzene must be made up of self-absorbed tiny snakes. Dreams are dreams. The trick is to identify ways in which they speak of wakeful life. Someone (sorry, can’t track the quote) once said we should not fear those who dream at night, but instead should fear those who dream in the day. Beecause it is they who make their dreams come true.

The dream is just a starting point

One of the rules of writing is that a dream used literally will not work. It may give the starting point for a story, but it rarely contains all the elements needed to produce good fiction. Paul McCartney still had work to do making Yesterday ready to record; but probably less than with most of his creations. Kekulé dreamed the kernel of an idea but needed to convert it into possible structures for the Benzene molecule, then devise ways to test these options, and finally find a way to convince the science community.

James Dyson came up with the idea of using cyclone technology in a vacuum cleaner in 1978. It was five years before the first prototype was ready, another three before he started to sell it. Now we’ve all heard of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, and he’s worth half a million which if nothing else makes development of subsequent ideas rather more comfortable.

Ideas cannot be copyrighted, it’s what you do with them that counts

You can’t copyright or register an idea. Only a practical fulfilment of the idea is marketable. Dyson tried to interest various vacuum cleaner manufacturers in developing his ideas, which meant his basic idea was there to be taken. Publishers are not interested in mere book ideas unless you have a well established track record, and even then what they want is a finished book.

Everyone has ideas

They say everyone has at least one novel in them, but few people start to write it and even fewer keep going to the end. After that there’s the major task of knocking that first draft into shape, taking on board criticism, and finally finding a way to sell the manuscript. Successful novelists dream their novels in the day, not just at night. Successful developers of business ideas not only have the vision, but also the enthusiasm and determination to do all the hard work needed to reach it.

At least nineteen out of twenty ideas don’t work

I’ve read that successful entrepreneurs make their fortune out of less than five per cent of what they try. A similar statistic is true for publishers: most of their books make a loss. Joanne Harris (author of best seller Chocolat) made about £1,000 from her first novel, and I was astonished it did even that well. Her second did slightly better. The next two failed to sell. Then she wrote Chocolat (Actually I prefer her next publication Blackberry Wine which I think she wrote earlier.)

It helps to build up experience

I sometimes have great ideas for songs. Trouble is I lack the level of musical talent required to really develop them. I can’t even write my idea down or record it because my knowledge of musical notation is too limited and I can no longer play a musical instrument fast enough to make it sound right. Now Paul McCartney, he’d invested thousands of hours in developing his musical talents, both creative and practical, before dreaming up Yesterday. In Hamburg the Beatles were performing live for full working weeks. James Dyson already had some experience of engineering the development of an idea, the Ballbarrow.

In his excellent book Outliers Malcolm Gladwell suggests that truly successful people spend at least ten thousand hours mastering their chosen direction.

Afterthoughts

Okay I’m going to stop there, do a quick check for typos and publish.

This is my first post in six weeks because I’ve been feeling rough, lethargic, finding it hard to doing anything constructive for more than half an hour at a time and maybe an hour a day. Short walks if brisk have left me feeling weak and maybe a bit achy for at least a day. I’m sleeping too much. I don’t think it’s ME (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) but you never know. Maybe I’ll have the energy soon to write about what I think it is: a vicious clash between retirement and chronic depression.

I know this article could be improved dramatically. I know the points overlap. But I need to publish something, and nothing is ever perfect. Maybe I’ll be lucky and some of you will suggest ways to knock this article into better shape. I just need the feeling of having done another post.

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Our town has many charity shops selling cheap but smart second-hand clothes. Whether or not you feel happy buying this sort of clothing for your family is just a matter of attitude. You don't have to be rich to be well clothed. You do have to be less concerned with the latest fashions or exact styles and colours. Happiness need not be about money, provided you have enough for the basics.

Yesterday I attended a ‘Child Protection’ course. It was good, clear, informative, helpful, and threw up one alarming oddity. This was one of the many statistics provided to give us a sense of the extent of child abuse in the UK. Most of the statistics were relevant, but one stood out.

Apparently 2.8 million children in this country live in poverty.

A horrifying statistic.

Until you check the current definition of poverty.

Poverty is defined as living in a family with less than 60% of the national average family income.

Right.

That’s a seriously unhelpful definition which risks bringing the rest of the data into disrepute.

It reminds me of when my wife, many years ago, worked part time as a Social Welfare Officer. She was sent on a training course, which was good. However after being told to observe signs of families living in poverty they were advised to look for such indicators as only having a black and white television. Well excuse me, she thought, but we only have a black and white TV and do not consider ourselves to be living in poverty. We just made the decision not to waste extra money on a colour set when what we have is fine and cash is fairly limited.

Happiness is all too often related to where we perceive ourselves to be relative to other people. A major world problem, and a growing one, is that modern technology shows people in poor countries how rich those of us are who live in more fortunate countries. This “causes” unhappiness. Clearly if your family has a low income relative to most in your country – say below 60% of the national average – you are at serious risk of feeling jealous, and as a result feeling less happy. But should happiness really be about relative income? Should a crude statistic like this be offered as an indication of child abuse?

No, I’m sorry, but happiness is not about how much money you have. Yes it’s nice to have spare cash, but it is not an essential for a happy life. We need enough food, clothing and shelter. We need to feel loved. It helps if there is a little to spare for luxuries such as a black and white television, but it’s not essential.

Some decades back I was struck by two families I visited in the USA. One lived in an affluent suburb of a wealthy city. They had colour TV, and back home in England I knew no one who had that. They had a dish washer. A what? I’d never even heard of a dish washer. Over dinner there was little conversation. After the meal Mum reminded one of the daughters it was her turn to stack the dishwasher. There was an immediate display of petulance. What an imposition, to expect her to stack the dishwasher.

The other family lived in a small wooden bungalow on the wrong side of a small town. The father worked at a manual job which he did not complain about. They split food for four between the five of us. It was a simple but adequate meal in a warm family atmosphere. As soon as we had finished the two children sprang to their feet, cleared the table and washed up. There was no doubt in my mind this was the happier family, and no doubt that their children were having a good childhood.

We’re now living on my pension, but I’m happier than when we had my salary as a teacher. I miss teaching, but I’m physically healthier and mentally far less stressed. We have the luxury of two cars – may have to sell one soon to reduce outgoings but that will be no real hardship now, just mildly annoying. We never have to worry about where the next meal is coming from. We’re careful about how we heat our home in the winter, but not anywhere near panic that we might not be able to afford heat. We’ve only had a few foreign holidays over the years – too busy paying school fees for the children – but that’s okay. Britain has a marvellous variety of scenery and atmosphere which we will never exhaust and the people speak our language. Okay so we’d like to go and visit friends in New England one summer and can’t afford to unless I place a book or two with a publisher, but that’s no reason to feel miserable.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the people deciding on such matters as a definition of poverty would turn their backs on trendy ideas, maybe go out and look at real life, and come up with sensible and helpful ideas for a change.

Hardly likely I know, but we’ll survive.

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