To make progress on anything takes the right small steps. If you are already very good at something, it’s because you know how to take those steps, but when you suck at something, the next right small step is missing.

This is so common when it comes to creativity. I’ve heard from many people about the creative projects they’ve put away to make money or raise a family. They don’t know how to get back to them. Or they don’t know how to finish them.

This happened to me.

And there was, and continues to be, a very simple solution that works every time.

I wrote a musical, my first. I’m not a theater guy, but I loved this story, and I didn’t know where it needed to go. I was stuck. And then a theater friend told me to invite some friends over to have a reading so I scheduled it. Boy did that light a fire under my butt so I finished a decent draft. The evening was one of the best moments in my life, not because the musical was great, but because I was surrounded by people I cared about who took my creative endeavor seriously.

Scheduling the reading is what got me to finish.

I put the musical away for six years because it felt like it needed too much work. Then last year I reconsidered my friend’s advice. I wasn’t ready for another reading, but I noticed, with a simple adjustment, his advice could work to unstick almost any creative project by taking a very small step. It goes like this:

Schedule a meeting with someone you respect to review your work.

That’s it!

“Someone you respect” adds a kind of pressure that can be very motivating.

In the last year, my small steps looked like this:

• Schedule a meeting with a theater director to review the old draft. That motivated me to get all my notes together and ask the right questions. He was happy to encourage me because I got organized for him. The next step was to
• Schedule small readings for each scene. This got me to closer to finishing the play, but Act II needed to be completely rewritten so my next step was to
• Schedule a reading in Copenhagen. I was visiting my daughter there in two weeks, and when I actually found a theater group who said they’d read my play, I finished Act II in one weekend!

Every time I made big progress on my musical, it was because someone I respect was counting on me to do it.

And the next step of scheduling those meetings was small and easy.

So what about you? Do you have a project that needs a boost?

If so, is there someone you can show your work to next week?

If so, get that into your calendar, like right now!

If you find these articles helpful, yay! The next one is the last in the Stop Sucking series. Pay attention because I’m putting together something I think you’ll find very helpful in your own efforts to stop sucking.

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And have a great week.