About The 12-Minute Method - Robbie Swale

And it turned out it could.

I had been writing for three years in an emergent way: writing about what I was curious about on a particular day. And through those three years I had been wrestling with how to do the things I wanted to do… even when I was scared, struggling and all over the place.

So, almost by accident, I had written not just any book, but a book about something specific. A book about wrestling with creative potential, about doing the things we want to do but are scared of, about starting even when we feel stuck. And I had written it 12 minutes at a time.

What I had written was, in some ways, new to me - I never set out to create it. What I found when I divided the pieces I had written in those first three years up, was that they fell into four distinct categories. These four categories could have been the four parts of one book, but in the end - to enable people to find just the part that they want help with - will each be the subject of a book in the 12-Minute Method series.

And so as well as the practice, this is the 12-Minute Method:

1. Start- we can’t make anything if we don’t start. Yet I had failed to start so many different things over the years.

2. Keep Going - this, in some ways, is the hardest bit. It means starting over and over again, not letting things slip. At some point, all of us have given up on things in our lives before we should have.

3. Create the Conditions for Great Work - if we want to do really great work, we have to create the conditions for that to happen. We can’t control creativity, we can’t control much in the complexity of the modern world, and we certainly can’t control when we make something that feels truly great, truly magical. But we can do things that make us more likely to create something; more likely to do great work. [Notice that this is not the first thing to do - don’t wait to create the conditions before you start. That’s peak Resistance. First, only start.]

4. Share It - finally, we have to share our work. At least, we do if we want to make a difference to people beyond ourselves. And the sharing, as my story shows, can feel like the hardest part. And it can be the most transformative.

The books in the series aren’t a ‘how to’ in the traditional sense. Creativity and humanity are both far too complex for me to be able to write a set of answers that work for everyone - and anyone who tells you different is lying. What the books - and the blog - do instead is to collect inspiration for you at each stage of the journey of making work and putting it into the world, whether that’s a book, a business or something else.

But not just any inspiration. Practical inspiration, test driven by me and learned from leaders in fields like business, leadership, psychology and coaching. Inspiration that I hope will help you beat procrastination, be more productive, and finally get your idea off the ground.

The world will, I believe, be changed by ordinary people like you and me having ideas and making them reality.

Let’s do that together.

And let’s start by starting.