For the last 4 years I’ve been low-key obsessed with productivity, and improving my creative performance.

I’ve read the books, I’ve tried the systems, I’ve done the workshops. There are a lot of smart people in this space, but also a lot of contradictory advice and complicated methods.

Over the coming weeks I want to take you down the rabbit hole of becoming a high performing filmmaker. I'll share the philosophy, systems and methods that have worked for me.

This week I’m showing you why reviews are the first step to improving as a director.

And I’m not talking movie reviews.

I’m talking about the habit of regularly reviewing our own performance.

Awareness is the key

“What get’s managed, gets measured”
Peter Drucker

Think of the Hero’s Journey. Where do we start?

The status quo, the normal world, where the character is at today, in this very moment.

The same goes for changing our own stories.

We need to know where we are right now before we can make an informed decision on how and where to improve.

We need awareness.

Most people live their lives on autopilot.

They live with the illusion that they’re in control, but in reality they’re going through the motions.

Without a process for creating awareness around how we spend our lives the best we can do is guesstimate.

Newsflash: we’re terrible at guessing.

Think about what you did yesterday, or the gods forbid, three days ago. How did you spend your time? What did you do?

When we’re on autopilot we’re easily distracted and pulled off course. Everything tends to feel equally important and at least for me I feel like I’m a little hamster running on my wheel, going nowhere.

It’s overwhelming.

I know we directors tend to be control freaks.

Guilty as charged.

And the lack of control I feel over my own time is exhausting.

How much is too much?

The second mistake we make when lacking awareness is overestimating our own capacity.

We say yes to everything, and fill our days with a mish-mash of stuff and things.

This overestimation leads us to feeling busy and stressed, and if we’re busy and stressed we must be getting a lot done, right?

It’s a well known phenomenon that people underestimate how much time we need for a task by 3-5X, sometimes even more.

When we think we can do more than we actually can and keep saying yes to everything, we inevitably give up something else.

For me that tends to be my creative time.

How about you?

Ever find yourself at the end of the day being like “I should write” or “I need to edit” but you’re so wiped out you end up gazing into the abyss, I mean watching Netflix?

The first step to taking back some control is by looking at where the time is going right now.

There are two things that have helped me more than anything else:

• The daily review
• The weekly review

If you can only do one thing, it’s the daily review.

The daily review

I’ve tried and failed to implement daily reviews many times. Every time it’s because I’ve made them too complicated.

When you try to start a new habit, making it easy is the first step to making it stick.

We have to make it so easy you can’t come up with an excuse not to do it.

- Step 1: Decide where you’re writing it

• By hand in a notebook
• In the notes app on your phone
• Advanced option: a dedicated journaling app (don’t bother with this yet)

Step 2: Ask simple questions, always answer the first question, the other questions are great, but optional.

• What did I do today?
• Did I spend time on the things that matter to me?
• What did I do well?
• What can I do better tomorrow?

Step 3: Prepare for tomorrow

Preparing the night before what you want to get done the next day primes you for getting these things done and sets the intention for the day. Ask yourself:

• What do I want to achieve tomorrow?
• Pick 3 things at most.
• Is this realistic?

Start with a daily review, and don’t let it go on for more than 10-15 minutes. 5 minutes is ideal.

I can not emphasize this enough.

DO.

NOT.

OVERCOMPLICATE.

The goal for right now is not to have a perfect system.

All we want is to add a little more awareness to our lives.

Remember what we talked about last week, progress over perfection.

Once we’ve got the daily reviews we can use them to create a higher level overview of our week.

The Weekly Review

When we’re focused on the day to day it’s easy to not see the forest for the trees. We get lost in the details and lack a bird’s eye view of our lives.

A weekly review should be designed to help us step back and take a look at our week as a whole.

- Step 1: Read your daily reviews for this week

- Step 2: Take note of what stands out about your week

• What got done compared to what you wanted to get done?
• What did you prioritize? Does that align with what you set out to do?
• What makes it easier to get little wins?
• What makes you trip up?

- Step 3: Plan the next week

• Use what you learned from last week to better understand your capacity
• Be realistically ambitious. You want to push yourself, but also give yourself a chance to win. Aim to succeed around 80-85% of the time.
• Be generous with giving yourself time for what matters to you.

Your weekly review should ideally take less than 30 minutes.

I’ve found when I need longer to perform it I often end up not doing it at all.

It’s better to start simple and get step 1 and 2 done, than try to have the perfect review.

Conclusion

Awareness is the cornerstone of improving anything. The same goes for creative performance.

If you want to improve your creative output, start by implementing a daily and a weekly review and get honest with yourself about where your life is going.

Next week we’ll talk about a stupid simple, yet brutally honest system for getting things done.

See you then,

Morten

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