Battleship: Little Boats and Big Boats.

by Jenna Pastuszek 

I’ve been thinking about navigating the dip. The Dip is a Seth Godin idea about when things get hard. Six months into a seemingly never ending pandemic and theatrical pause, it feels like many of us are in creative and artistic dips.

Recently, my coach Peter Shepherd asked me how I navigate the dip. I thought about it, and I realized that having a lot of different things going on at once helps me to keep going. I’ve been keeping track of them in quarantine on a flexible To Do List like this:

When one thing is done, it’s not like I’ve put all of my eggs into one basket. In working this way, I can avoid the temptation to linger in feeling depressed and lost now that it’s over. I simply check off that project, start a new Get To Do list, or scan my chart to see where else I can put my attention.

Every time I ship a project, an idea, a reach out, a self-tape, a social media post, a blog, whatever- I think to myself, “Nice! That ship has sailed. Where’s the next thing coming into the harbor?”

On your project board, there can be a balance of things, just like in a harbor. All of the things you’re working on don’t have to be huge boats. It’s just like Battleship. In order to win the game, you have to sink ALL of the boats, big, small, and in between. A good harbor maintains a balanced fleet.

 What if you considered yourself a harbor master? Meaning, what if you aren’t actually on the ship when you ship something? Instead of thinking that you may have “missed the boat,” what if you’re always working on the dock instead?

We get the ship (the project, the noodle, the task) ready to go and then it goes off on its journey. Once that boat leaves, we can dust off our hands, and turn our focus toward getting the next one ready to go.

Once you ship your work, and the boat leaves the harbor, much of the rest of it is out of your control. You can’t control the wind or the weather or what happens at the ship’s next port. Follow ups are a good way to check in on the ships you’ve sent out of the harbor. Just remember that it’s up to the boats to return your morse code message.

Sometimes, all of your boats won’t successfully leave the harbor. Sometimes ships need servicing, and you have to dry dock the ship to do repairs. Other times, the ship is just old, and it needs to be taken out of the fleet and replaced. Sometimes a boat is just going to sink.

And sometimes, the harbor is closed. It’s a Sunday, and no one is manning the port because they’re honoring a day of rest. And that’s accepted and understood and important in maintaining the flow and energy of your dock.

Leaders who keep shipping generate more momentum.

Look at your creative life.

Are you maintaining a balanced fleet?

What’s one small action you can take today to get a boat ready to begin its journey?