I’ve done a poor-but-improving job at what might be the most important factor to being creatively excellent: doing less at once.

*The choosing one | Created by Jay W. Austin & DALL•E*

Throughout my professional life, I’ve always insisted on having more than a few projects going at once.

These projects varied in size, scope, and composition. Some were client projects, while others were mine. And some of these “projects” were much more than solo creative works, more consequential because they were businesses or organizations.

My justifications evolved throughout the years.

8-10 years ago: I’m gaining experience, so I need to experience many things.
5-7 years ago: I’m in my mid-twenties with some money, experience, and room to fail. So let’s fail fast.
3-4 years ago: I’m out of money and it feels like I’m running out of room to fail. I need to stay diversified to see what hits.
2 years ago: See above. Keep diversifying.

Then came the pandemic lockdown and marches for social justice.

I got straight to work during this time helping to organize food drives for immigrant communities (spearheaded by my partner at the time), working feverishly to help usher in criminal justice reform, marching and protesting, supporting the rollout of tests and vaccines to low-income neighborhoods, and registering people with criminal records to vote.

But there were many intentional moments of pause during this period, too. You know, for sanity’s sake.

And it was during one of those pauses when I recognized something: I had a long list of projects I had started, but hardly a list of anything I had finished.

I’ve allowed myself space over the last couple years to unpack why I had so many projects in perpetual progress. Here are some of the things I realized through the pandemic:

My brain loved the start much more than it loved the process it takes to finish.
My ego feasted on being able to tell people I was working on so many things. As the projects would fail or fade away, I’d get validation from others as they told me how impressive it was for me to have a hand in so many things.
My hands had forgotten what it was like to truly practice (like what I did almost religiously with piano or baseball). Instead, they preferred to dabble.

And this morning just before 1 AM, I stumbled into another recognition that flows like this:

Keeping too much on my plate is a fancy and insidious form of procrastination.
This procrastination is serving as an emotional buffer to the reality that I’m finite.
And at this point in my being, my finiteness is scarier than anything concerning the project.
While creativity is infinite, a creator like me isn’t.
Therefore, limiting my project load and truly finishing the few projects I choose is actually a recognition of my finiteness.

Maybe I’m not as ready as I thought I was to embrace my mortality.

I still won’t finish everything I start.

There’s just simply not enough time in me, even though I’m young. And not everything is meant to be finished, as in “done.”

Now, though, I’m at a deeper point in my creative journey where I’m engaging more in the practice of starting less.

I’ll still explore widely and wildly, create small things here and there that pique my curiosity and ignite that thing inside that we call “creativity.” And I’ll enjoy and struggle with those projects, probably in a similar way to what I do now.

But I want to find myself saying “no” to more in the way that Elizabeth Gilbert suggests:

It’s much harder than [saying “no” to what you don’t want to do]. You need to learn how to start saying no to things that you do want to do, with the recognition that you only have one life.

Doing less at once puts me in the best position to do the things I’m meant to do, here on this planet at this point in the story at this moment in being.

Aye, I’m Jay. You’re on my personal site where I post things I make about interrupting mass incarceration, protecting migration, environmental justice & sustainability, language, communications, storytelling, creativity, and tech.

Learn about my ventures here, check out my non-profit initiative here, or explore my consultant services here.