Mar 02, 2018
We’ve all been spooked by this ghoul before, who is totally preoccupied with making you feel preoccupied. Preoccupied with everything except your creative pursuits, that is. This creative monster will glorify your feeling of busyness and distort your perception of time… if you let him.
Bio: The No Minute Man makes you believe that you are too busy for creativity. He emerges from his home in the time-telling section of your mind and zips around, creating small mental ‘busy piles’ for you to sift through. These piles clog your clear vision of how much time is in a day and how much you can get done in that time. No Minute Man glorifies the feeling of busyness. He holds his watch necklace in his withered hand, tapping on it throughout the day, reminding you that time is ticking away and you have none of it.
Symptoms: Hypnosis, negative thought patterns. No Minute Man hypnotises you to believe that you are an innocent sufferer at the hand of your own schedule. This is the fellow we can blame for thoughts such as “I don’t have time”, and, “I’d love to pick up something new, but when would I do that?”. He might even make you feel proud of the deprivation of your creative self, heralding how busy you are at work, or the time you spend taking care of other people. Every time you give in to these thoughts, he pins a shiny new ‘No Minute Badge’ on your chest.
Antidote: No Minute Man is a clever ghoul, but he is beatable, and with a bit of conscious planning, rearranging, or cutting out the useless parts of your day, he will disappear completely. Sure, da Vinci may have taken 12 years to paint the Mona Lisa’s lips, but a bit of creative activity every day doesn’t need to take a long time. We can start with smaller chunks and build up our creative muscles. To prove that it’s not about time, try this creative exercise that just takes two minutes.