Caitlin’s Creative Business Bookshelf - Episode 7: Big FAFO Energy
I received a lovely DM from someone the other day on Insta, asking how to make the time and energy in the pursuit of effing around and finding out.
So I'm sharing some practical tips today on how to do just that!
This is taken from an IG Live I did on the subject recently, and I hope you find it useful!
I shared a print from Boring Friends on my Instagram recently - I am actually going to buy one of their prints because it spoke to me quite a lot, but basically the print had said on it, the only way to get creative, basically, is to fuck around and find out. And I had so many messages from people saying how much it resonated with them and that was the energy they wanted.
And it's very much the energy I try and strive for in my creativity as well, is to literally just fuck around and find out and bring that sense of curiosity, bringing that sense of playfulness to our creativity.
Because, and I do feel like slightly a broken record when I say this, but it is true when we kind of embrace the failure, and I say that very much in inverted commas, the playfulness, the curiosity, the fun in our creativity, it rewires our brain, basically to kind of bring that into other areas of our business because we kind of realise that through experimentation that things don't actually matter. And I say that because I've been doing a few things like experiments in my business and that's the ultimate message that always drops through for me every single time is that it's not that big a deal. It's not that big a deal.
Which is why I'm a massive promoter of fuck around and find out energy. And if I wasn't practising that energy myself outside of business, there is no way that I would be doing it inside my business, to be honest. I just wouldn't have the experience and the evidence showing me that it's safe to just give things bad. Basically all that to say, I had a lovely DM from somebody who asked me how to make time to fuck around and find out. I did do a podcast episode recently which was talking about how to get more creative every day without the overwhelm.
And I think for the listener, for the listener, for the lovely person sending their question, that podcast episode would be a really, really good listen because I go through some of the more practical tips on how to actually get creative. But I really like this question because it just felt like something like a little bit different. And basically how to have that fuck around and find out energy, how many times am I going to say fuck around and find out on this, on this live, who knows?
But how to do it, how to make time for it, and also how to kind of protect your energy around it as well. Because even when we're doing things like this outside of business, and even when they don't have any kind of we're not relying on our creativity outside of business to pay our bills, right? But it can still feel a little bit sticky, a little bit vulnerable, and it certainly does for me, anyway, sometimes, and especially when you're kind of starting to do a bit more creative self care, it can feel a little bit vulnerable and a little bit oh, my goodness. I'm being confronted with all these feelings about this stuff. So I wanted to share some tips for the lovely person who DM'd me.
And also because I have a feeling, just a little inkling, that there might be others of you struggling with this as well.
My first tip for making more time to fuck around and find out is to keep it really small and to do one small thing every day, because that is going to be infinitely better than doing a massive multiple hour chunk one day and then never touching it ever again. So in the pursuit of fucking random and finding out, I would always recommend starting small. And this is something I recommend, actually, whenever you're kind of starting to bring creative self care in, because it's like when you start doing anything.
If you start going to the gym, for example, if you're trying to go five times a week, you'll likely be able to do it for a little bit and then you'll just stop because it will just be too much. So it's always better to kind of start where we are at and build it up over time and this is no different. So when you are kind of doing some messing around, getting creative and stuff, this is a tip I'll always recommend because it always works. Like I said, it's like for any habit really, the smaller you start, the bigger it gets, right? Which sounds painfully obvious to say, but that's just how it works.
And also you're going to be so much more likely to do something if you're kind of building up from smaller steps rather than just having the big thing and going from there so that would be tip numero uno.
And also in a similar vein, I would say keep the stakes as low as you possibly can. And by this I mean keeping it light, keeping it fun and keeping the stakes low in the sense of, for example, when you are doing your creative fucking round and finding out, remember that you don't have to tell people and you certainly do not have to post about it on social media. I love sharing what I'm working on or playing with outside of social media, but I do not share everything. And I think that's really good because I think as soon as we start to bring it onto social media, we do run the risk sometimes of still seeking that external validation.
And it can be like I feel fairly removed from it, but I don't always. And obviously when we're sharing stuff on social media, we want people to like it and to resonate with it and stuff. And there can sometimes be, I think, a danger that when sharing what we do for fun, it kind of opens up the possibility that it could not be fun, if that makes sense. So yeah, keeping the stakes low by not sharing what else did I say as well? And another example of keeping stakes low as well, in a more practical sense was using what you have around you.
And by this I mean we have all done it, okay, we've all done it where we wanted to start a new hobby or start something new and we go out and we spend loads of money in Hobbycraft. There is nothing wrong with spending money in Hobbycraft!
But what I kind of mean by saying all that is that it unintentionally makes the stakes like a little bit higher than they should be because you kind of think, oh shit, I've spent all this money and I've got all this equipment and I've got to use it all up, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it can kind of feel a little bit restrictive, but also a little bit like, oh my God, we have the stuff. Like we have to do something with it now and you don't, it's fine. So keeping the stakes low in that sense as well, I think is really important. So if you can use what you have, that means that you're kind of not feeling like, oh my goodness, I've wasted all this money and I'm not any good at it and kind of put in those unnecessary things to beat ourselves up with on.
So yeah, that's my second tip for you, keep the stake as low as possible. So yeah, like I said, it can look however you want it to, but basically things like not sharing your experiments with people if you want to, please do. Obviously not buying loads of stuff, using what you have not setting goals around it. I think that's an important one.
My next tip would be to remember that you are literally fucking around, okay?
And this might seem like an obvious tip to share, but it's just a reminder really that the point of fucking around and finding out isn't that we kind of get to an end point with it. It's supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be light, it's supposed to be experimental, it's supposed to be like playful. And remembering that it's just an experiment will absolutely help you to keep going with it and help you want to make time for it as well. If it kind of feels like another job to do or another thing on the to do list, then it's going to kind of take away that kind of incentive for us to do it. And that's when we kind of turn to Netflix or doom scrolling or picking up our phone like 35 times.
So remembering that it is supposed to be fun and it really doesn't matter what comes from it, it really doesn't matter if you do it for a bit, you do it for a long time. You have a tangible thing to show at the end of it. You don't have a tangible thing to show at the end of it. But always remember that it is fucking around for a reason.
It is an experiment. Treat it as such.
That being said, next tip on this is if you are finding it really hard to get in the zone and to get in a space where you're actually doing the thing, treat it like you would treat it any other part of your business.
And I mean by that like just being present and being as present as you possibly can. And if that means putting your phone in aeroplane mode and shoving in a drawer, do it. That is a tip that I refer to in my podcast episode that I mentioned a little bit before but that's always a really good one and it also shows yourself that it matters and that it's like irrelevant. Oh, this is like an important thing because I've diarized it or I've switched off my phone or I've done X, Y or Z. So that would definitely be another tip I would share.
Just treat the fucking around as if it's important because it is. I say it's like a fun and city experiment but how else do we get to anything, right, if we don't do the fucking round and finding out? I'm doing a lot of fucking around and finding out in my business at the moment. Actually. I've said it so many times, so many times.
And that brings me on to yeah, I guess the last tip I have for the lovely person who DM'd me is if everything is just not working out, some good old fashioned accountability works wonders. And this can be accountability in any way you like.
Again, in the podcast episode that I released a few weeks ago that I mentioned, I talked about doing things like not just saying to someone, oh, can we meet up and do this thing? If you can go to an actual physical thing, that always really helps me. I would never have learned crochet if a friend hadn't said to me, the amazing person who does my nails, if she hadn't said to me, let's go to a class, I wouldn't have done it and I wouldn't have discovered A, how frustrating it is and B, how much I enjoy it once I push past the frustration.
Find a person, go for a thing, maybe set up like a Zoom date or something, get together and just have a little chitchat.
You can do things like financial accountability is one that obviously do it in a way that works for you, in a responsible way, but in a way that will still push you to go and do the thing.
Going back to the gym example, if you pay for gym membership every month, you've got way more skin in the game than if, like, you're not. Yeah. And if accountability is something that you want additional help with as well, I am going to do a cheeky plug.
I've got Co Creativity Club, which is my monthly membership, where we get together every single week on a Wednesday morning or evening, depending on which one you'd like to come to, and you can come to both people do. And we work on our creative projects, we work on whatever hobby we're loving at the moment and we just get together for an hour and just do it.
And it's great. I love it. Everyone's working on such wild and wonderful and unique things and it's just really good. So if you want to come in and join that, you can. And if you want to go a bit, like deeper on the fucking round and finding out thing, the membership is a perfect place for you to be because that is literally the name of the game in there.
We're always fucking around and finding out and yeah, again, if you want to go even deeper than that, I have spaces to work one to one as well, so you can book a one off creativity cheerleading session with me and we get together on Voxer and we can FAFO in real time!
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