#Trust30 challenge: Speak less
Jun 20th, 2011 | By Chris Bell | Category: Blog
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know I.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
I once received a fortune cookie that read: “Speak less of your plans, you’ll get more done.” What’s one project that you’ve been sitting on and thinking about but haven’t made progress on? What’s stopping you? What would happen if you actually went for it and did it?
(Author: Laura Kimball; image: my Le Fay Pangton fretless bass, the significance of which I’m superstitiously not going to talk about, except to say, “I’m doing it.”)
It’s an enduring danger: talking about a book, a story idea or any creative endeavour before starting it. Better to talk about it as little as possible – if at all – until after you’ve actually finished it. That way, you won’t waste the creative energy you should be saving for the thing itself on recounting your doubtless brilliant idea to your friends.
Admittedly, they’ll encourage you, offer useful feedback, probably friendly advice, if you’re lucky. What they won’t do is help you to ship it.
You may think that any idea resilient enough to be able to become a painting, poem, novel, screenplay, sculpture or teapot ought to be able to stand up for itself as a bar-room anecdote, a topic for ladies who lunch, a passing mention in an interview about your current project.
You’re wrong. Dead wrong. Don’t do it. Keep it for yourself. Store up the energy. You’re like a rechargeable battery. And if you don’t charge up to your limit it won’t last.
One way street
There’s something else I want to say about speaking less in relation to #Trust30: it’s not just a matter of speaking less but also expecting less: several times I’ve reached a point with the prompts where I’ve wanted to quit.
For the first 10 days or more I was disappointed by the lack of comments and the amount of time it was taking me to post my responses – it started to seem like a one way street; a lot of energy expended for no good cause.
I felt I was spending a lot of time reading other people’s tweets in order to select from those (all too haphazardly) which #Trust30 posts I felt might be worth reading. The fact is that most are worth reading but there aren’t enough hours in the day.
The Pandora’s box opened by Project Domino and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance website began to annoy me, too – where were their words of encouragement? Their reminders about why we were taking part in the challenge in the first place? Along with their prompts, I felt we ought to be getting the occasional morale booster. I wanted to know their thinking about the complaints I was reading on Twitter and Facebook regarding the redundancy of some of the prompts. Where were their words of support as we hit the midway point? Their guidance on the inevitable lack of momentum and loss of impetus felt by participants who didn’t gain the web traffic, creative head-start and confidence boost they had been hoping for? Would we all just reach Day 30 of the challenge to be left with the echoes of the hollow words of our responses, never to hear from Project Domino, Ralph Waldo Emerson and #Trust30 again? Is the whole thing a ‘fizzer’?
It’s Day 20. I still don’t know the answers to these questions. But I do know Emerson was right:
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”
The last couple of days has seen a modest increase in the number of comments on my website. Slowly but surely, the number of my Twitter followers has been increasing. A couple of people I’ve contacted solely through #Trust30 interactions have asked to friend me on Facebook. Surprising myself, I have accepted.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the apparently heartfelt encouragement and words of affection shown by the participants. Admittedly, there’s an element of reciprocity about all this; one feels a certain duty to leave a comment on someone’s blog when they’ve gone to the trouble of visiting, reading and commenting on yours – but what’s wrong with that? Politeness among strangers is a virtue. It’s one of the things that helps to differentiate us as humans.
The internet can be a lonely, sickening and underwhelming place to spend your days. I often feel drowned out by the noise, like a shipwrecked soul shouting into the maelstrom.
#Trust30 is now making me focus on modest gains: new friends (perhaps one or two True Fans among them), a comments dialogue and, of most importance to me, thousands of words I otherwise would never have written.
Enough said.
- #Trust30 is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge organised by The Domino Project that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. For more information, visit http://ralphwaldoemerson.me/
Oh, and the significance of the bass: it’s not what you might think.
You are so right! I have basicly the same on my blog (which is in Dutch btw) no responses. They don’t care to read about selfawareness or repeating yourself (which, be frank, is what it must seem like for an outsider, to read about the same prompts over and over again, maybe in a different way each time but nonetheless.. )
Via the Facebook page I read some of the blogs. Lots of them are inspiring. So is yours!
Kati
One of my biggest frustrations about blogging in the past has been that the spammers always seem to arrive before the real commenters. I’ve learned over time, though, that there are at least 10 and as many as 50-100 (depending on the blog) readers for ever commenter – and they’re still listening. It never happens as quickly as we want it to, but it does happen.
The irony is that I think people are waiting on us to take action. If we’re going to give up, why get invested in our projects, comment, etc.? Once we prove we’re in it for the long haul, people take notice.
I was smiling as I read your post today, Chris. I certainly see “frustration” as a viable choice in this project. If I consider that one, I ask myself to look down that road and see/feel where it might lead me.
Nope, don’t like that feeling. Not choosing to go there.
So that was valuable! Now I know where not to go.
As far as the folks at Domino, my feeling was with a project centered on “self-reliance,” I didn’t expect any “attaboy!” slaps on the back to encourage me. It would seem to be cross-purpose with the exercise.
With the line you posted from RWE, it seems to me that you’ve landed in that area as well. Fair to say?
I’m thankful to have discovered your work here. My world is now richer for this experience. I appreciate your sharing.
Namaste.
Rich
Thanks, Rich. Of course you’re right about “self-reliance” and what was ostensibly the central aim of the project. Somewhere between individuality and hand-holding (the “Attaboy!” slaps on the back you wryly mention) lies the engagement of showing the participants they’re not participating in a vacuum.
We’re all doing what we pledged to do or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Other than the posting of a daily prompt, the website remains entirely static. The same applies to the #Trust30 Twitter hashtag and Facebook page. Those who set the challenge are conspicuous by their absence. Would an acknowledgement of the numbers of participants be too much to ask, for example?
It may be unreasonable of me to expect otherwise, but the challenge would have been more involving and inclusive if we could have felt the organisers’ presence a little more profoundly. Of course, as I attempted perhaps unsuccessfully to express in my post, my frustrations are (as always) mainly with myself. So, yes: the conclusions I have drawn are that incremental gains are all that can be expected. Is that achieving Self-Reliance? If so, the challenge is working its magic.
In conclusion, I would still be disappointed if, when the #Trust30 challenge reaches Day 30, the only dialogue had been between the participants. I want to know what the organisers’ hopes, expectations and frustrations were, too.
Again, Rich, thanks for taking the time and trouble to read and comment.
Very nice post, Chris, and your response and frustration to this challenge is absolutely appropriate. What you’re looking for and asking is a community manager, someone to do the cheering on. Trust30 was designed after another blogging series called Reverb10 (http://www.reverb10.com) which has an extremely strong community that is led by a rock star of a community manager. Trust30 is a very different series. I’m not an organizer, so I can’t tell you what their original goals are, but I think it had something to do with getting people to think about RWE’s work.
What I found helps when entering into a blogging challenge like this one — and I’m embarrassed to say that life has gotten in the way of me keeping my word with the challenge — is I start by writing down what my goals are for the month so I have something to keep me grounded. Here’s the recap I did for a self-directed 30-day blogging challenge to give you an idea of how it worked (http://bit.ly/f1tnVr).
At the end of your challenge, I’d write a recap for yourself and see what you really got out of it (self reliance and all), and I’d recommend sending an email to the organizers — seriously couldn’t hurt.
Thanks for reading my post and commenting, Laura. It’s been gratifying to see some of the authors actively participating in #Trust30. I’ll check out your blogging challenge recap as soon as I get a chance.
I have RWE’s ‘Self-Reliance’ on my Kindle and have often referred to it in the course of #Trust30.
They’re good points you make about emailing the organisers, and I’ll conclude by saying that my frustrations have diminished with the increase in networking, comradeship and reciprocal comments between the participants – it’s begun to feel like a community; albeit a bit like ‘Survivor’, ‘Big Brother’ or ‘Treasure Island’ at times…
Thanks for expressing this, Chris. I’ve been slogging through the month myself and having trouble figuring out what I’m even doing with it- especially because I don’t have my blog and my Twitter presence connected (long story), it often feels even more isolated. I mean, what’s the point of doing it on a public blog rather than a private journal, if forming a community around it is so challenging?
I’ve kept at it, though, so I guess I’m getting something out of it- and there have been one or two prompts that really surprised me and led me somewhere unexpected. So I can hardly call it a total wash, even if the main result has been getting in the habit of writing more often.
Getting into the habit of writing more often, Layne: that’s the main thing, I’m realising more and more. Focus on that. Thanks for commenting and visiting the site.