When you have a big project that doesn't completely occupy your mind.....

[nancylebov]

what do you think about while you're working on it?

At the moment, I need to do a huge amount of button business stuff, most of it fairly routine. (Two conventions on the same weekend, so I need two adequately filled sets of button trays.) And I've got resellers who wouldn't at all mind having at least 750 buttons among them--before my two conventions.

I've made significant progress, but I've still got a lot to do, and I think a lot of what makes it hard unless I've got someone to chat on the phone with is that I just keep thinking about how much more I need/want to get done. Focusing on the next thing isn't interesting enough because making the next button isn't that interesting.

So....when you've got a big project like that, how do you occupy your mind?
I'm especially interested in hearing from people who don't have huge problems with that sort of project. When I say "don't have huge problems", I don't mean "no procrastination", I mean procrastination kept under enough control that the work gets done anyway.

Comments

[goldcube.livejournal.com]

This is probably an annoying, unhelpful answer, but it's true for me. If I'm engaged in some activity that doesn't completely occupy my mind, & there is a lot of it stretching out ahead of me, the only thing I've found that helps is making it completely occupy my mind. I've found that the most tedious mundane tasks become fascinating if I allow myself to fully engage them at the level of the senses. What you have to do seems easy for this - the beauty of the letters, the pleasure of the perfect movement executing the stroke, seeing the finished button, piling them up. If you can make your focus really small, the whole universe opens up in every, um, grain of sand.

My only other suggestion is listening to music, which seems to free the mind to day dream all over the place.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I could try that, though most of what I'm doing isn't calligraphy--it's putting buttons together and re-oranizin trays.

I have tried some meditation, including Taoist-flavored earth below/stars above stuff and it helps.