Let your body decide

So you have a project idea in mind. It is exciting, but you don't know if it worth pursuing. Perhaps you have tried starting, but the work is awfully strenuous. Still, it has potential. Do you choose to keep looking or commit to this idea?

Maybe we should let our body decide for us.

This might blow your mind, but we are not reasonable creatures. Over the long-term, we do what feels good. However, we can force ourselves to do things that don't feel good for a short period of time.

Before I get to the creative side of things, it helps to understand how habits are formed. Going to the gym is a great example.

When we first start exercising, it is a double whammy of suck. It sucks before we even get there. Just thinking about working out will make us feel like crap. And it definitely sucks while we are working out. Finally, if we make it through, we get a release of feel-good chemicals in our brain.

Training your body to do anything habitually takes time, but most habits - like eating sweets - don't take an immense amount of effort up-front, like exercising. That is why it is easy to form low effort habits. Eventually, our body starts to understand going through this pain period makes us feel great. Then exercise becomes just a single whammy of suck. It doesn't suck before you get there because your body isn't rebelling, it knows the good feeling will come later. Of course, the actual workout will always be hard. But getting there won't. Boom. Habit formed.

When wrestling with a project commitment try and form a habit of showing up first. Force yourself to work long enough for the potential to be there. The difference between this and starting to exercise is we don't know if this project can turn into a habit. We know working out makes us feel good. But despite whatever logical story we are telling ourselves, this creative project might not. If it doesn't, we won't be able to show up everyday. If it does, then we know that we can commit to this. Our body will decide whether or not the project is worthwhile.

There are still other factors to consider when committing to a project. But there have been many times where I thought I was in love with an idea; however, I couldn't get myself to habitually work on it. This allowed me to stop wrestling with the commitment question altogether.