Adam’s Notes Weekly Edition 001

Previously, Motivation Monday.

Housekeeping: I’ve changed the name of the weekly newsletter from ‘Motivation Monday’ to ‘Weekly Edition’ for clarity.

In this Issue:

📝 2 ingredients for creating a Morning Routine That sticks.

📝 Recent Optimisations

👾 Some Creative Tension, and a Strategy for using that energy. (For paid subscribers)

2 Ingredients for designing a Morning Routine that sticks.

The first thing I did was..

Make it memorable

I named the routine using an acronym. This makes in Memorable, and if you’re going to do a routine, it’s a good idea to know what that routine is. The way I created an the acronym was to list the activities I wanted to do then reorder the list until the first letter formed a meaningful word. I changed some words to fit the acronym, instead of ‘draw’ my word is ‘sketch’ because I needed the ‘S’ the acronym is JETS

J = Journal

E =Eat

T = Train

S= Sketch

Now instead of finding time to do four activities, I just need to find one time slot to ‘JETS’. (Sometimes I might ‘JETS’ in the afternoon if it was jut impossible to do it in the morning)

The second thing I did was..

Make it Flexible

I used thought of these as categories and not a specific activity. So I don’t need to journal or train a specific way, depending on the season or day ‘Journal’ could mean something else, and ‘Sketch’ could mean something else.

I try to have levels for each category, from something super easy like a ‘5-minute journal’ to something more challenging like ‘Morning Pages’.

My current default is to Bullet journal. Have a protein shake. Do a 7-minute workout. Free Sketch with ink on a 200GSM sheet of paper. While I do have a default on some days I might swap higher or lower level activities for the particular activity.

It has taken over a decade to craft a way of thinking about a morning routine that is personalised to my needs and is both memorable and flexible.

Why it works?

Together the Categories form a habit stack that just feels good to complete as a set. 💎 Bundle Habits to take advantage of our brains need to complete things.

Bundling eating in there as an anchor habit ensures the routine gets initiated without any force of will. 💎 Include an anchor habit in the set to ensure the initiation of the habit daily

And allowing for easy levels, increase the chances of the routine being completed and thus strengthening the consistency of the habit. 💎 Design levels for the activity starting from super easy to help build regularity and consistency.

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💌 Recent optimisations

• JETS - This habit stack of Jornaling, Eating, Training and Sketching gets my energy to a level that makes me more effective in anything I need to do. This is my Habit for Sharpening the Saw.

• Work in the morning - Although my hous are flexible, as often as possible I try to get my work done in the first part of the day, Evenings are better for family and winding down then mornings. The exceptions being Zoom calls from the other side of the world.

• Daily Sketches - I’ve simplified my sketching practice to the following, 1 timer, 1 sheet of paper, A nib pen and ink, draw for the duration of the time even if its just lines and spirals.

• Bujo - I’ve combined my Journaling and Planning into a single activity with a single home in a bullet journal. This version of journaling has a different set of perks, and I welcome the freshness of the change.

• Daily Newsletter on a schedule - I’ve picked a time for this newsletter to go out every day, and have at least one letter written and ready to go in advance always. This is to help you build our daily telepathy sessions into your schedule. And it helps me do the same.

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Last weeks highlights:

☕️ We’re Chatting about Journaling in a substack thread.

👨‍🎤 The illoguild shares some of our favourite picturebook spreads

📝 I shared an impression about what writing is

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FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS

👾 Some Creative Tension and a Strategy for using that energy.

For 2 years before getting my first deal to illustrate Childrens books. I have been making and sharing work online. For my first book a designer collected 8 images from that period to show me what they were looking for in a book by me. I knew the work I was putting online if I kept doing it, would get me work.

Now that My days are filled with making work for clients, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to share work online. Just like getting my first book was a lagging result of 2 years of posting. I imagine the lagging result of not posting for 2 years would be; No work.

80% of client work can’t be shared and most of what can be shared can only be shared years later. So everyday there is a tension between making client work and making something for future clients.