I was inspired to another moment of heresy today.

A reader wrote me an email in response to my last blog post, A Curious Question Came Out of Nowhere.

She said: “Wow, I really needed to hear this, so thanks for sharing!!! This ‘work’ has become just that - work. When we have a meetiing or I talk with someone about what we all are doing, I can get passionate and that brings me energy. Then I go home and look at the to-do’s and it is all work again.”

This reminded me of a client of mine who is daunted by her to-do list. She always does something like going for a walk, meditating, doing dream work, or sitting by the fire and journaling, before she starts on her to do list!

I was brought up to ‘get the work done first’, and that isn’t a very effective model when there’s always more, and too much, work to be done.

I’ve personally found that when I have the guts to do something that engages my passion first, the to-do’s go much more quickly and efficiently. I actually save time!

I’m testing the “play first” model.

I haven’t yet done any art work to share today, so I’ll include a train I drew last summer, an Electroliner that was quite ‘ahead of it’s time’ in the 1940’s and 1950’s. It traveled between Chicago and Milwaukee.

Here’s the message from the train: “Sometimes it doesn’t work well to just apply more speed and more power on the same track.”

Filed under: Being a Reinventer, Adventures of a Reinventer, Lynne's Reinvention Journey on January 26th, 2009