Magic Hour

A creative cure for procrastination.

I am a procrastinator!

This perversity means I will procrasti-clean, do admin, go deep researching weasels on pinterest, write lists, browse art supplies, make photo montages on canvas, or just piffling around on social media. I will willfully be active in something other than the thing I want to do most. Then I will make myself feel bad about it - the guilt, the shame, the “what is the matter with me!”...

Montage of procrastination-shame:

oh dear

But…

I have found something that stops this. I discovered it when Helen Stephens and Emma Carlise hosted a co-working session. And suddenly, in an hour I was super productive. I got the task I wanted to do done, finished, and then another… It was magic.

And so, I popped a little message up on my instagram stories, saying I’d like to do it again, not knowing if anyone would join me. But they did.

And now at least twice a week I run my own ‘Magic Hour’.

A small group of us jump on zoom, we have a chat and each say what we’re going to work on. Then we pop ourselves on mute (this bit is important, so as not to distract eachother, as I did once telling off Ted for raiding the bin).

Then for a whole magical hour we work, and at the end we have another chat about how it all went.

So beautifully simple, I don’t know how it works - and if you know please don’t tell me. The wonder of magic is not knowing how the trick is done. What I do know is that this co-working gets me sat at my desk, focussed on working on something substantial and there’s been other benefits too.

Magic hour has become a real highlight in my week. We’re each sat alone at our desks but suddenly its like we’re sharing a studio. We’re able to talk about things that matter to illustrators - agents, deadlines, thumbnails, awkward revisions, writing, overthinking, planning workshops… It has been great to connect up, we’ve assembled our own action squad and get to feel like we’ve achieved something as well.

If you fancy joining - there’s a calendar here: https://lu.ma/magichour

How have I used today’s action hour?

By finally writing a post on here.

(just four months after my last one)

Oh dear. Here’s to getting more things done, and continuing to believe in magic.