Sifting Season: Seasonality & Switching modes
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🌸 Good morning/afternoon/evening, depending on where you are in the world. : )
If you’re new here, I’m Cait, a creative laborer working in art and advertising. I run a creative company called FLOWERS.
In Cal Newport’s book Slow Productivity, he talks about the idea of seasonality. Not trying to do everything all the time, but instead working in different ways on different things at different times, depending on what’s going on in your world. Newport’s a professor, so he uses the summers to write and ideate on new work, when he has a break from the structure of the academic schedule.
He also breaks down Slow Productivity into 3 very simple ideas:
Do Fewer Things. Work at a Natural Pace. Obsess over Quality.
It’s a daily struggle to focus on doing fewer things when it feels like there are so many things to be done. Sometimes that just means focusing on one “mode” at a time, if I can.
I switch between modes of collecting, sifting, and making.
Right now I’m in “sifting”-mode.
I’m looking at things I’ve collected, scribbled on notecards or my journal and am deciding what they mean and why I collected them.
Coming out of a collecting-mode in Japan, I’m sifting through what was collected as a way to internalize and glean what jumped out at me most or what I want to cement a little deeper in my brain.
As usual, I scanned a bunch of things to get them off my desk and into 2D form.
I’m not making anything yet, but the sifting is really fun:
Still sifting, we will see! Perhaps something from here will follow me into my making mode, perhaps not. The collecting and sifting is a meaningful process for me regardless. I’m a collector of things and I like to see the things I’ve collected in my notebook like specimens. Removed from all other context, it’s easier to be objective about what I liked.
I'm curious if any of you have special tricks navigate to navigate changing creative rhythms? Perhaps your own version of 'mode-switching' that helps you stay productive/reflective/inspired?
Thank you for coming as always. I really appreciate it!
Cait
What is High Thought?
📸 High Thought is written by Cait Oppermann, a creative laborer in the world of art, advertising, & what falls between.
@flowersfullservice & @caitoppermann
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I forget how much value Cal Newport provided to me in the past. And I do love the idea of seasonality. I remember watching the Magnum Learn course by Gregory Halpern and felt aghast at the thought of sitting on years of images that haven’t been widely displayed in the hopes that it would be edited into a cohesive project or book. I always felt like I had to share images quickly and constantly out of fear of losing traction or interest in my work by those who mattered to me. But by doing that, I fast passed myself into boredom with my own work, realizing I had only provided myself temporary relief from not taking photos I wanted to take by taking any photos at all.
During Covid, I felt like that was a season of tightening up my photo editing skills. Couldn’t take any real photos with everything shut down so might as well prepare for the day that I could. That ended up taking me down a path of being interested in film photography because I was curious how digital compared to analog. Then analog prints. All of these things feeling like seasons on a larger scale like how one year on Jupiter is the equivalent of several years on earth.
Last year, I was diagnosed with ADHD, which in hindsight affected my life in countless ways all of which had made life more challenging than it did making it easy, and the combination of new medication and my years of therapy made me feel so differently when it came to making work. I feel ok with pausing taking photos because I can explore other interests and not feel guilty about it. And I have found that those other interests influence the direction of my photo making and provide clarity on the WHY the things that grab my attention do, which again helps point me in a direction/s to travel.
In reading your post, I love the idea of labeling the “season.” Collecting, sifting, etc. I think labeling provides a certain level of intentionality like “THIS is what I am doing NOW.” This labeling or naming or describing is something I want to bring to my own life as I think this would aid in providing more focus for how I want to utilize my time.
Anyways, lovely reading your thoughts.
P.S. Seeing that Pocari Sweat label triggers such a vivid memory of how thirst quenching one of those bottles was after hiking in Kyoto without water or cash to buy a drink and finally making it back down to an ATM.