Hello friends! Well I’m wandering into 2021 after a few weeks of intentional thinking space. Study finished right before Soul Craft began, and then the (wonderful) festival ran and then it was the whirlwind of family birthdays and Xmas, and anniversaries, and a week away.
But then I’ve also had a few days to clear out my cupboards - both in real life and the proverbial ones - which is making things feel a bit calmer. But also it’s lead to a realisation about my making that I’m turning into a challenge of sorts - Operation Clean Slate?
So, my making practice supports me in my everyday - and consequently as I mentioned last week, when I get the chance to pop my head above the treeline to look around, I try to figure out if what I’m doing in that practice is serving me. Sometimes it is, and sometime not so much. Getting intentional and conscious is one of the most important tools I have to make sure my making practice is supportive and connected.
What I discovered these holidays was that I need to do some tweaking around how my making supports me in my everyday - as the way I feel when I’m making is not quite how I want to feel. When I walk into my study/sewing room/loungespace/ironingsection of the house I haven’t been feeling that joyful combination of freedom and excitement and creative buzz. Instead I’ve been feeling busy, list-focused, overwhelmed and a little frazzled.
Now that is partly to do with the length of the to-do list this summer. All three kids have done weed-like growing this last year and had not a pair of shorts between them that fit without a camel-toe-esque silhouette. So there is that. There are also a few overdue projects that need completion for their little heads and hearts. Two of them have birthday sweaters that are long overdue. One is just finished this week, and one is yet to be started.
And then there are the lists of things that I want to make - ideas and thoughts and needs that are waiting in the wings. I could go on but that would just unnecessarily fill your head with my makers mess - and there is no need for that.
So there is one more piece of the puzzle I need to share before I can tell you what the challenge is - and why it is so exciting to me. Last semester I did a Cognitive Psychology subject - which roughly translates to the psychology of how we think. So it’s about our perception of the world and our memory and thoughts. A wonderful subject that I thoroughly enjoyed.
What was exciting about Cog Psych was we were taught a couple of the concepts/theories that keep tumbling around in my skull, making me think that possibly there is a better way to live and make. And as such I’ve been reevaluating how I was approaching my making, and I want to share them with you. Apologies in advance for the slightly dodgy psych explanations :) - but I’m still a beginner.
But before I begin - I just want to add that the reason I found this so fascinating was that it gave me a possible explanation for why my brain felt overwhelmed when I had too many WIP on the go! And now that I understand it a bit better, I can see why a different way of approaching things might be helpful…
So here goes….
One
Our brain is a gigantic associative network where memories, perceptions, ideas, smells, thoughts, objects etc are connected (or associated!) by what they have in common. So if we think of a giraffe or a seal - they would be both associated with the word animal. But they would also be associated with the word zoo - as they are sometimes found in zoos. But only the seal would be associated with the word ocean.
In our case if I think of my WIPs, then my brain has a whole heap of projects associated with term WIP. Oh yes she does. Knitting projects, sewing projects, quilting projects, a spot of weaving, a pile of mending, tools, possible WIP I haven’t even started yet but am thinking of….
I realise this doesn’t sound that exciting yet - but stay with me!!
TWO
When we think of an object, our brain primes (think of this as “gets ready”) all other pieces of info it has that are associated with that object. It does this to make recalling information and data faster. So if we think of an individual WIP, our brains prime all the WIP we have on the go (because it is trying to be efficient and fast), even if we are only specifically thinking about one of them. It kind of gets them ready so that if we need to access them we can do it faster.
Three
Our attention has limits - we only have so much attention to give - and some theories about how attention work refer to our brains capacity. We know this intuitively and we’ve experienced our brains feeling full.
Four
Splitting our attention means that we lose some of that capacity. So when we split our attention in two, we end up with say 45% on one and 45% on the other, and the 10% left over is used by the splitting. Please note; that these are not the actual numbers but merely to give you an idea, and that I’m actually making myself laugh as I write due to the ineptitude of my explanation but play on!!
Five
That there is not just a cost to splitting our attention but ALSO there is a drag when we move from giving our attention to one thing to another. So we also lose attentional capacity when we have to shift our attention from one object to another. Another phrase for that is attentional residue and a paper here by Sophie Leroy describes the research that shows that we are less productive if we are regularly shifting our attention from one task to another.
Alright. So what has this to do with making and WIP?
Well, I am a polyamorous maker - and I love it. I love having different projects for different moods and different capacities. I have some projects that are calming and some that are exciting. And because of this way of working I make many things. They each have a different timeline, lifetime and process. Some have been hanging around for years and are worked on a stitch at a time. Others are bish-bash-bosh, done and dusted in a day, from start to finish. But there are always many things going on at once.
So here is my theory, my hypothesis if you will.
Maybe the sheer number of WIP is what is causing my making practice to feel stressful and job-like. When I think about what project to do on a given day my brain runs through the list of possibilities. And it’s a long list.
Maybe the associations my brain is making between one WIP and another, and then the attentional pull of having too many on-the-go could be causing my making practice to feel overwhelming*.
Maybe when I walk into my sewing space - or even into parts of my house - I can see my WIP lying around. And even when I can’t see them, knowing what I now know about memory and about the associative networked nature of the brain, I know that they are there. It’s almost as if although I can’t see all my WIP in every moment when I am in the space, I can feel them. I can feel the weight of them. Maybe the responsibility of them?
Responsibility because my values are such that I don’t want to be wasteful and I want to minimise the impact of my making. I also want to be the kind of person who finishes what they start and isn’t totally chaotic. And yet my nature means that I am a bit chaotic. So maybe part of the attentional residue is that I also have to sit with the slightly negative associated story that I have, about my disturbing distaste for finishing things?
Or maybe it is simply that there is too many WIP to hold in one’s mind and therefore overwhelm is the result?
This was so long ago this room now looks totally different as we have renovated and replaced those leaky windows and painted-over-rotten-wood.
So the aim is to take what I’ve learned in Cog Psych and apply it to a practical problem. To see if by significantly decreasing the number of WIPs I have on the go, I can make my making practice feel lighter and less chaotic, and to see if that translates to a more nourishing practice.
My hypothesis is that a simple clean up, a clear out, a cleansing of my making process is what is in order. Maybe I could work my way through the WIP and get down to just a couple, just to see how that feels? Maybe I could get it down to zero?
So welcome to my new project Operation Clean Slate: A project where I aim to inventory (over the next few weeks) and then finish my WIP.
Operation Clean Slate is about cleaning up my maker’s space so that I can see what it feels like to not have so many half finished projects. It’s about attempting to get more intentional about what I start and why. It’s about making space for whim projects so that when I am making on a whim I can do so without the weight of half finished ideas harassing me from the bleachers (or rather the corners of my sewing room :))
What would it feel like? Would it feel good? Would it feel clean and light and hum with possibility?
Thinking outloud hey! That is what this space, this blog was always about.
I know many before me have gone through this process and become more monogamous (or monogamish) makers - but before I did Cog Psych last year I didn’t quite have the why I should do it. I knew the weighty feeling of too many WIP but I kinda relished the bigness, the ongoingness of my making practice. It felt like having many WIP was something of a freedom but now I’m thinking that actually again limits can lead to true freedom. I wrote about this a few years back in this Stash Less post.
The freedom to walk into my sewing space and feel the pull of possibility and the joy of alignment, rather than the weight of responsibility and unlived values…..
I will keep you posted on how it goes and if you would like to join me I would love to have you along. I’m thinking that #makingacleanslate is a nice hashtag?
And if you have done this before - any tips, tricks, advice, thoughts? I’d love to hear.
Big love to you all!
Felicia x
