Archives: Challenges

I wrote a few weeks ago about getting ‘a job‘ to help get me out of the house and a little less stir-crazy (one of the pitfalls of working from a home office).  I expected it to be hard work, but that was kind of the point; it would hep my mental state, my writing and my honeymoon fund.

What I didn’t realise was that it would be such hard physical work and that as a consequence, I’d become stronger and fitter so much more quickly than I’d been planning on with my regime at the gym.

The unexpected benefits of the things we do in life can be some of the best. The same thing goes for business, writing and filmmaking, too. Sometimes we do things because we enjoy them, sometimes we do things because we think they’ll be good for us or for others and sometimes we do things because we feel we have to.

Whatever your motivation for doing something – positive, negative or self-serving – it’s always good to be on the look-out for those things we’d never have had access to or experienced had we not taken that certain task on.

I rarely give things up for Lent. A few years ago, I gave up going into hospital , but that one didn’t last, thanks to those pesky medical people trying to keep me alive.

This year, though, I’m vowing to give up the fear of failure.

Too many of life’s decisions are governed by the “what if it all goes wrong?” question or “what if I look silly for trying it?”. Too often we skip over great opportunities because we can’t immediately see how to make them work and we worry about what it’ll look like to our friends, colleagues and clients if they don’t.

So this month I’m going to enter into every project with a sense of the infinite possibilities as opposed to the dread of defeat.

That’s not to say that I will be hurling myself into projects willy-nilly. Fear of failure is very different to realistic expectations for the success of a project and if it doesn’t make financial (or time-cost) sense, then it will remain on the back-burner for the time being.

What are you going to commit yourself to for Lent? What are you afraid of failing? Announce yourself here – loud and proud – and we’ll all keep tabs on each other.

If you’ve established yourself a strict, productive routine, it can be hugely beneficial to give yourself some slack now and again.

As you probably know by now, I’m training for the 3 Peaks Challenge in June this year. Since I’m much further behind all the other members of the team, I’ve set myself a rigorous and punishing work, training and dietary schedule to get myself in shape.

Motivation for anything can be hard to maintain, but even more so when you’re limiting and/or being tough on yourself, restricting certain things and enforcing others. That’s why I’ve taken to giving myself a ‘cheat day’ once a week to allow me to indulge, slack off and generally slob around a bit.

Including a cheat day as part of your regular schedule – whether it’s a day off from work, a day with no internet, eating whatever you like or just enjoying something you don’t usually have time for – can be a much stronger motivational tool than a long-term goal; knowing that you’ve got a ‘rest day’ coming up can help you work harder and more efficiently as well as increase your positivity and productivity.

Don’t be so hard on yourself; cheating’s only cheating when it does you a disservice. Sometimes cheating’s just the best way to move forward.

I’ve been in a funk since the weekend.

Working too hard, not playing enough and feeling generally a little run down, I’ve been struggling to concentrate and get my head in order with no inspiration to get anything done.

Then, today, thanks to a friend on Twitter, I did the one simple thing that works every time. I got off my arse.

The simple act of standing from your sofa, your desk, your workbench and going and doing something can be all the inspiration you need to get back up and at ’em.

Next time you’re funking1, just choose something, get up and DO IT.

1. new word! [↩]

A natural part of life is looking back over the past and – occasionally – wishing you had a passport back to the “good old days”.

Yearning for the past, however, precludes us from looking to the future. Facing the in the wrong direction not only leads to heavy-hearted nostalgia1, but also stops us being open to new ideas and new opportunities.

Most frequently, we hark back to the days of “carefree joy” and “spontaneity” that marked our teenage years, but it’s vital never to forget that everything we’ve experienced – and especially all the good stuff – we were able to enjoy and consequently remember fondly because we were open to a wide range of possibilities and new adventures.

There’s nothing wrong with looking back; just make sure it’s a glance over your shoulder, not a 180˚ turn from your forward path.

1. or worse, sentimentality [↩]

A Twitter buddy of mine this week posed the following question:

Would you use [product placement] to fund / part finance a film?

Followed closely by this Tweet, which makes no secret which way he’s leaning.

All this is, of course, highly appropriate just now with the UK about to start allowing product placement for the first time.1

I do think product placement has a place in helping to fund the TV and film industry over here. Apart from anything else, who are we to turn down sources of funding to get things made – not just for us but, potentially, more and better off-the-wall, risky TV drama and other formats it may help fund?

The issue for me always comes with the compromise that a filmmaker or an artist has to accept in order to allow for product placement.  If you have to change elements of your script to accommodate a product you need to take a long, hard look at the reasons behind it and not fool yourself that it’s a “creative” decision.

That’s not to say all changes in the name of placement are a bad thing2 but I would always shy away from placement-based rewrites that affected anything more than a passing glance or irrelevant detail.

The key decider for any product placement-based changes has to be this: if someone were offering you the same sum of money without a product to push, would you make the changes they’re suggesting just because they’re giving you the cash?

If the answer’s “yes” then either a) they’re surprisingly good story analysts and you struck luck or b) you’re a sell-out and I wish you a long and happy career.  Just don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re making great art as you pander to the the money-men’s whims.

It’s entirely possible to incorporate product placement in a creative and ethical way, but we should all beware of those people who will become slaves to the product, rather than serving their story.

1. The BBC have got a great article on it and its perceived impact here [↩]
2. you wouldn’t see a huge amount of harm in switching a character’s car from a Ford to a Seat, for instance, as long as it says the same things about his life, social status etc [↩]

Sky Atlantic, the brilliant new HBO-inspired channel from Sky, is currently running a number of great, classic shows from the beginning. Last night, I caught up with the Pilot and first few eps of ER, a show I used to adore but only started watching from around Season 4 or 5.

The pilot isn’t anything all that special: there isn’t much in the way of plot; it’s just a random collection of traumatic events and an introduction to the characters. I’ve seen many better pilots in my time.

What’s easy to forget some 17 years on from that first airing is just how revolutionary and innovative E.R. was at the time.

Never before had a medical drama been shot in such a kinetic, absorbing style. Never before had a show allowed its characters to speak “normally”, without qualifying what “O2 sats” or “insanelylongmedicallynamedthingy” was. Never before had a show stretched its character’s personal arcs across more than a few episodes before nicely tying them up.

Now TV can’t get enough of the verité style; the best shows all worry more about the characters than the events; our favourite shows stretch character arcs and storylines across entire seasons1, without wrapping things up nicely at the end of each episode.

It’s easy when we look back at our old favourites2 to see them in the same light we see things now. But if we’re going to continue to innovate, it’s vital that we don’t forget what innovation looked like in the first place.

Remembering how someone set about doing things differently can inspire us new creative heights, allowing us to see how people looked at things from new angles and created something fresh, exciting and–ultimately–hugely influential.

What innovations did your favourite films and shows introduce? How did they change the landscape and inspire other creators to go further?

1. or even longer in some cases (LOST) [↩]
2. be they TV shows, films or any other artistic or creative endeavour [↩]

Everyone has bad days. It’s a natural thing; life can’t always be sunshine and popping candy.  The trick is not to let bad days absorb you and pull you down into a spiral of bad mood, bad attitude and – as a result – more bad days.

One of the purposes of my original blog (archived here) was to constantly remind myself of the good things in life; the simple things that happen every day to make you smile.1

Getting through bad days is all about finding that kernel of goodness, that moment of levity, that scrap of positivity and grabbing hold of it with both hands. It’s not always going to make your bad day go swimmingly, but by looking for the good in every bad day, though, you’re opening yourself up to the positive experiences, rather than closing yourself off: that road leads to wallowing.

Don’t sweat the bad days, just try to find the good that you can carry forward into tomorrow so you don’t let the day that’s gone before rule the next day, or the next, or the next.

1. hence the title: Smile Through It [↩]

This week I discovered the many pros and the major curse of staying regular.

Since re-branding my blog1, I’ve been blogging to a steady schedule of Monday, Wednesday, Friday for new, authored content, with Pick of the Web linked-content on a Tuesday and Thursday.

Last week, I didn’t blog on Thursday and Friday as I was busy taking stock of things in my life. In those two days, my readership on the blog halved. Just three days when the blog was devoid of new content.

But worse than that, it’s stayed at a lower ebb and is only now (after 3 days back on the regular schedule) starting to pick back up towards its previous numbers.

Blogging regularly is great in terms of building an audience; if people know when you’re posting, they know when to come looking and they know what to expect from your blog. But beware of committing yourself to a schedule of posts you can’t sustain.

Much better to follow a simple, one-post-a-week formula (such as that employed brilliantly by Clive Davies-Frayne on Film Utopia), than it is to attempt daily posts that you can’t keep up, or to release new blog content in a scattershot manner whenever you feel like or are able to write it.

Work out what you can realistically achieve, define your schedule and stick to it. Staying regular is the key to creating value for the people who read your blog as religiously as you write it.

1. and myself, to a certain extent [↩]