September 6, 2015

The power of naming procrastination

Have you ever procrastinated for a significant period and then, when you’ve finally done the thing you procrastinated over, wished you’d done so much sooner?

We’ve all been there at some stage, some more than others.

You know that task I mean – that one that had you cleaning your house AND doing your tax paperwork, anything simply to avoid that which you need to do. (On the upside at least your house is sparkling and your tax paperwork sorted.) [Feel free to substitute any tasks you hate into this scenario if you are one of those people who like housework and tax paperwork.]

It might be over little things or it may be that it crops up more for major changes or tasks.

Whether it’s taking the plunge and starting that project, upgrading that PC, laptop or other device, calling in that plumber, culling the gear in that drawer or cupboard where you can longer find anything, contacting that friend with whom you’ve been out of contact for far too long or changing your hairstyle, diet, job or even ending a relationship … knowing we should have done it sooner can be frustrating.

Why do we do it?

Is it that we:

Are unsure where to start?
Make a start but give up too soon?
Don’t break the task into manageable chunks?
Go in the wrong direction or pursue dead ends?
Overcomplicate what needs to be done?
Are scared of finishing?

It could be any of these things or a combination, and it may be different things for different tasks, but sometimes procrastination does serve a purpose.

There are valid reasons we may delay, such as:

We may need to be sure
We might need to prepare ourselves
The timing may need to be right
We perceive that staying as is easier (at least for the time being).
Or sometimes it is avoidance. We may actively resist the things we most need to do, and at the heart of avoidance, fear often resides, although guilt and/or anger can have a bearing as well.

Sometimes we do need a little time to be sure we are making the right choice or working out the best way to tackle something, but all too often we expend unnecessary energy or waste valuable time. It might be occasional but it can become a habit, and it can have huge impacts.

Crabapple blossom © 2014 Jacquie Garton-Smith

How can we gain power over procrastination?

Name it.

What do you need to do?
Why do you need to do it?
What is stopping you? If you are stuck for ideas, hunt for any aspects about which you feel worried or fearful, guilty or even angry.
What is the impact of not doing it?
What would be most helpful for you to do now? This may be a conscious commitment, taking a first step, developing a plan or even consciously deciding the time is not now.

Although I am most interested in “creative procrastination”, the things I have been known to procrastinate about are wide-ranging and so I have kept this post broader. This is what works for me but I am sure there are many approaches.

What is your experience of why you procrastinate?

What do you find most helpful?

I’d love to hear your ideas and experiences – please share them in the comments.

Thanks for reading this post! Some of my other related posts include When push comes to shove – juggling priorities in a time-poor world and Is excitement a new strategy for writers?

Or you may also be interested in What are the synergies between mindfulness and creativity? and Where health and creativity intersect.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

P.S. If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email (your email address will be kept private and will not be spammed). You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

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March 8, 2015

The different kind of excitement building for Change Day Australia 2015

There is a different kind of excitement about Change Day Australia in the count-down to 11 March 2015 than in the lead-up to the 2014 event.

Last year I felt a nervous anticipation – 2014 was the inaugural Change Day in Australia to which a smallish band of passionate people, including me, had dedicated a lot of time and effort. We have a pretty good health system in Australia in lots of ways but it absolutely can be better. Would people come on board? Change Day is all about doing something better together.

Over 15 000 wonderful pledges were lodged in 2014 in which people committed to things they could do to improve health ranging from

individuals committing to something that will either improve the health of others such as standing up to discriminatory behaviour, volunteering, being a role model or packing healthy lunches for their kids or for their own health, be it regular exercise, healthy diet or reframing their thinking;
health professionals pledging to listen, to smile, to introduce themselves, to provide training or to put the person at the centre of their care;
departments using it as opportunity to identify a focus or think outside the box and plan something they could achieve together;
big ticket items such as the Western Australian Director of Public Health pledging to develop a memorandum of understanding with the WA Health Consumers’ Council.

For Change Day 2014, I pledged to do my best to raise awareness of, and encourage participation of people in Western Australia in Change Day, and am thrilled that WA did achieve roughly 3500 pledges, approximately a quarter of the total in 2014. Many more people within WA have now heard of Change Day and lots of taken up promoting the 2015 campaign themselves with enthusiasm we could only have dreamed of last year.

2015 is shaping up to be even better, approaching 20 000 pledges from across Australia before the big day. Again the breadth of pledges is amazing.

The effort for 2015 has been more about embedding than beginning. The excitement now is palpably more confident that this is an initiative which people will increasingly embrace and with a greater impact.

What do I find most exciting about Change Day?

People are recognising and embracing the NEED to change.
People are empowered to identify and make change(s) themselves, rather than just be subject to changes made around them.
Change Day prompts every one of us, whether working in health or not, to think about what we could each do to improve health. Improving the health of our community is everyone’s responsibility.
The benefit of teams uniting to pledge together has also been highlighted by many.
How great are the fabulously creative ideas that people have come up with? Some even involve creativity in health (see my posts on Where health and creativity intersect and The healing power of creativity if you want to understand why this excites me).
The enormous cumulative potential of many people each pledging to do even just one thing – collectively we can make a huge difference.

The power of Change Day is in the simplicity.

Just think what can be achieved if we repeat and grow Change Day Australia every year!

Personally I have found it extraordinarily rewarding to help drive something that has so much potential, to meet so many people passionate about creating opportunities for positive change in health and to learn from the creative approaches taken by others.

My Change Day Australia 2015 pledge

This year I have pledged to work with my colleagues and networks to help people with (or at significant risk of) cardiovascular and other chronic health conditions to improve the quality of their lives through better access to information, support and more options for care outside hospitals, especially towards the end of life.

It’s no small ask but for me this allows me to draw across the different positions I hold, the networks of which I am a part to do something valuable and my passion for writing. There is some scope to achieve this in different ways. Flexibility is good as how things can be best done may be not fully appreciated even knowing what the starting steps are. Once you decide what you need to do, opportunities appear. As soon as I pledged I felt enormous relief – I could now get on with doing rather than thinking about what to do or how to word it!

Over to you – I urge you to pledge now!

Big or small, easy or difficult, creative or picking up on someone else’s idea, under anonymity or with your name … Whatever works as long as it will in some way improve health.

Go on, you know it’s the right thing to do.

Have you thought about a pledge for Change Day?

If you’ve pledged – either this year or before – what have you achieved so far?

I’d love to hear your ideas and experiences – please share them in the comments.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

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February 23, 2014

A Better Death

Having the best life we can is something many of us desire and work towards. How we, or our loved ones, can die as well as possible is something many think less about.

A month ago we lost a very dear family member to heart failure. It is hard to write about still. In truth I have found it hard to write at all over recent weeks. However there is so much to learn from everything that happens and there are some positives to share from this experience which may help others.

My mother-in-law Chris was an incredible woman. She was one of the kindest people I have ever met. She hadn’t had an easy life, but she faced both life and her impending death with grace, courage and acceptance.

This post is a tribute to how she handled the situation she found herself in, but there are three key elements that allowed her to do so:

1. Information.

The cardiologist communicated very clearly about her prognosis and, to the best of his knowledge, what she could expect at diagnosis and all along. It was a shock for Chris at first, but it was the start of her coming to terms with her shortened life expectancy and to consider and communicate her wishes. As her condition became end-stage, she was not surprised and had most things put in place.

2. Palliative Care.

As a family we had experienced together how much palliative care can help in the past and Chris welcomed a timely referral. Palliative care is not just for cancer. There is much available to assist people with end of life chronic disease. The combination of expert care to help ease unpleasant symptoms, in this case particularly severe breathlessness, and the mobilisation of extra help at home made a huge difference to her quality of life over her final few months. It also allowed us to spend more quality time with her, as she was more comfortable and able to do a little more than she would have without treatment.

3. An Advance Health Directive.

The benefits of making an Advance Health Directive or a “living will” were at least two-fold. Firstly, her wishes were clearly articulated and helped us as her family understand what she wanted. Secondly when she had an unexpected sudden turn and an ambulance was called, the paramedics were given the Directive as soon as they came and were able to act in line with her wishes, as legally obliged to do so. There was no grey area. Without it, she may have been given CPR and carted off to hospital, both of which she explicitly did not want.

Our loss is still painful. We each regret that she had to die and we all miss her terribly. Because she had a sudden deterioration on the background of a slower decline, we didn’t get to say good-bye in the way we might have liked. But we can grieve knowing that she knew and had accepted that her life was ending and that the way she died was as she had expressed she wanted – peacefully at home, dignified with a minimum of fuss and with a quick final departure.

The key lessons to achieving a better death from our experience:

I encourage everybody to be open to having conversations around death. What may seem uncomfortable for some can bring enormous comfort.
In addition to this, I ask my colleagues in the health professions to clearly communicate, to offer early referral to palliative care and to provide information about Advance Health Directives (or your equivalent).

Would you like to share anything about your experience of losing a loved one?

What did, or could have, made the journey better?

You also may find inspiration from my posts on Imagine yourself in someone else’s hospital bed (or chair), The best cuppa ever about kindness or an earlier exploration of Where health and creativity intersect.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email. You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

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(updated 4 May 2014)

Copyright: Vector Image by StockUnlimited

December 19, 2013

Imagine yourself in someone else’s hospital bed (or chair)

Have you been in hospital before? What was it like? If you haven’t, spend a moment thinking about how it must feel.

Hospitals are scary places for a lot of people. A person who is normally confident in their home or work environment may feel completely un-empowered. Add pain or other unpleasant symptoms, boredom, constant noise, stress about what is wrong and whether you will recover and to what condition, inadequate information, lack of continuity in staff, and we have a potentially volatile situation.

Now imagine being sleep deprived, extremely unwell, very young or very old, being isolated from your loved ones, not fluent in the language spoken (and that’s before you get to the medical jargon), confused and/or not able to communicate clearly for some other reason.

Even those of us who work in healthcare often feel powerless and frustrated when it is our turn to be patients or a relative of one. I can only guess how intimidating it must be when the hospital is an even more foreign environment.

I have recently spent a bit of time bedside in hospitals and at doctor’s appointments with relatives and it has caused me to pause for reflection. At the same time I have seen a groundswell of health professionals and others wanting to do better. Positive change doesn’t have to cost a lot nor take a lot of time.

My challenge to health professionals and other staff is to try to imagine what it is like to be the person in front of you and to try make their visit a little easier for them. You may not be able to walk in their shoes, or lie in their hospital bed, but try to visualise what they might be going through.

6 simple steps to better know and help our patients:

1. Introduce yourself by full name and position the first time you meet anyone (ie the patient or their relative) – #hellomynameis.

2. Make eye contact. I know it is so obvious but I have seen people deliberately avoid doing so. An excellent way to make someone feel worthless.

3. Spend time getting to know a little about your patient and their family, especially their carer(s). In General Practice we often get to know our patients much better (and usually in their more natural state). You may not have the length of relationship in hospitals but you may be surprised to find out something more about the hospital-pyjama clad individual you are attending and help you work with them to better health. Who are they in their real life? What interests them? Is the man of few words in front of you running a multi-million dollar business? (I joke not!) Or a concert pianist? Or scared because his Dad had a heart attack at his age? Is the glum lady who looks ready to bolt terrified because her family who have come down to the big smoke to go into hospital never come home? Or is she worried about who is looking after her dog while she’s in here? Does she have a gorgeous sense of humour once she trusts you? It may help you to understand better where they are coming from, what they fear, what they understand and what they still need to know.

4. Explain. In language your patient can understand. Get an interpreter if needed. Information truly is helpful. We know only a proportion is taken in especially when bad news is delivered or someone is under a lot of stress or very unwell, so check their understanding and be prepared to have to explain some key things again.

5. Allow time for questions. Every visit. What you think your patient will be worried about is not necessarily what they want to know.

6. Visit regularly, especially when you have said you will (and apologise if you have been delayed). Your patient knows you are busy but is almost certainly hanging out for every review and update.

We don’t have to be health professionals to make changes to improve health. Anyone and everyone can do something (or many things) to help the health and wellbeing of others.

While I was studying, I worked for a family-owned department store in Perth called Aherns who trained their staff to, amongst other things, chat freely with the elderly people who came through the shop if they had time. The managers explained that they recognised that for many it was a rare social outing and for some, the only conversation they might have that day. Thirty years after my training with Aherns I still remember this. I still think my six years working with them gave me a better foundation in communication and dealing with people than my medical degree and subsequent studies did.

I have recently been made aware of the HUSH Music Foundation and would like to applaud Dr Catherine Crock and every contributor for their efforts to make hospitals more relaxing through music. I’d love to see this rolled out elsewhere. I’m sure there are other great examples and would love to hear about them.

We may not all have that kind of creative talent, but don’t underestimate the value of smiling in the lift, helping with directions or introducing yourself to the person next to the one you are visiting and asking if they need anything while you are picking up a paper for your loved one.

What have been your experiences with the health system?

What would you most like to change about health care?

What can you do to make a difference for someone else?

You may find inspiration from my last post on kindness or an earlier exploration of health and creativity.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email. You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

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(updated 13 April 2016)

December 5, 2013

The best cuppa ever

I have been reflecting on the importance of kindness recently. What strikes me is that acts of kindness can be random or intentional, big or small, but even the small ones can make a huge difference.

One stands out for me many years after it occurred.

When I was a junior doctor working at a large tertiary hospital, a number of the rotations required us to do overnight ward cover. These could be gruelling, particularly covering medical specialities where you would be the only doctor in the hospital looking after some seriously unwell people with very complex conditions on a number of different wards all over the site. You can’t plan the work to any great degree as the job is to respond to things that come up and need urgent attention. Weekend nights could be especially tough as the usual medical teams often hadn’t been in to review their patients during the day.

Sometimes I have nightmares that I am on overnight ward cover again, well over two decades later.

It was working one of these shifts on a Sunday night that I had a list of tasks longer than anything I had ever imagined. I was dashing up and down stairs (the lifts being archaically slow) trying to get at least the most urgent jobs taken care of before the next calls came in. Around 4am I headed back the Renal ward to review a patient with kidney failure who had developed a high fever and needed assessment, blood tests and treatment started asap.

I had a number of other equally unwell patients and didn’t know if I could physically get to do all the things I had been called to do over the remaining four hours of my shift. Despite being a hard worker and relatively efficient, I felt ill with the sheer pressure of the workload.

Having seen the patient, I only had moments to sit down to complete the paperwork. As I sat down, one of the ward nurses appeared with a mug of tea in her hand. I think my eyes may have become teary as she put it down in front of me and said, ‘You look like you need this.’

It cost her only a few minutes of her time but it made all the difference. Even though it was ordinary hospital tea it tasted incredible. It did recharge me, not just from the sustenance, but from the fact that someone cared enough to both notice that I was exhausted and overwhelmed and to do something to try to alleviate how I was feeling. Even in the healthcare industry, we could do more to look out for each other.

I can still see her face but I can’t remember her name. I don’t know if she has any idea how much her kindness helped me that night.

This humbling act of thoughtfulness stems from the deeper well of kindness that, when demonstrated, helps individuals and communities. Kindness helps bring out the best in us, be it in family or friends, a co-worker or co-creative, an acquaintance in person or online, or someone you don’t know. We won’t always know that our kindness has been appreciated but it is worth doing anyway.

How has an act of kindness made a difference to you?

How can you make a difference to someone else by being kind?

Do you have a good “cuppa” story?

Looking after others should be core for health professionals but we don’t always look after our patients, our colleagues or ourselves as well as we could. We don’t have to be health professionals to make changes to improve health. Anyone and everyone can to something (or many things) to help the health and wellbeing of others.

I see a lot of kindness in the creative community as well as in the health industry. I thank you for the kindness that you have shown me.

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

P.S. Although I am confident I can attribute the benefit to the kindness rather than the chemical effects of the tea, here’s an interesting article by Jeremy Dean on Tea: 6 Brilliant Effects on the Brain.

If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email. You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

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October 31, 2013

From Books and Band-aids to Blogs

How daunting is it writing a first blog when there are so many great blogs out there?

I feel thoroughly enriched by reading many blogs. Even when they touch on the same subject, I find each one reinforces the others, often offering a different take and building further understanding of the issue. And what a joy when you read the line that gives you an aha moment or truly resonates.

I thought looking for a good blog would be like finding a needle in a haystack, to use a cliché that is not very relevant today. But the art of blogging that I have observed is one of being efficient with words and concepts and hence valuable key messages are not hard to identify.

What also amazes and impresses me is how willing people are to share their knowledge and ideas so freely, both to write their blogs and respond to comments. In some cases, even to connect in a more meaningful way.

In the first few weeks of participating actively in social media I have been fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to have coffee with a local academic GP leader to discuss collaborative opportunities, to Skype with a GP in England who shared some visionary ideas around electronic health records and to join a national initiative that will have enormous potential to create positive change in health, Change Day Australia.

I am hugely grateful for the time that people give for the greater good. I’m not sure these would have arisen via my usual networks, and certainly not so quickly and easily.

The collective momentum has potential beyond anything we could have dreamed of in the pre-digital era. It is also important to ensure that quality information is available, particularly when there are some dodgy sources out there.

Anyone who knows me knows that I usually have something to say. So why not say it on the most public platform of all, the internet? And join this fantastic community of individuals sharing their perspectives with anyone who cares to read it.

I hope to bring together my experiences as a doctor, a writer and a very ordinary human being, as we all are at the heart of it, to contribute to the greater good. My mum has recently reminded me that as a child all I wanted for treats were books and Band-Aids so perhaps my callings were evident from a young age!

I hope you will join me for my next blog on where health and creativity intersect. If you’d like to be sure to catch my next post, please sign up to follow by email. You can also follow me on Twitter (@JacquieGS) and Facebook.

How has your life been enriched by a blog?

If you blog, what has been your journey?

With best wishes for your creative health and that of our community.

Jacquie

Photo by Mia Holton

Why do we do it?

Crabapple blossom © 2014 Jacquie Garton-Smith

How can we gain power over procrastination?

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What do I find most exciting about Change Day?

The power of Change Day is in the simplicity.

Just think what can be achieved if we repeat and grow Change Day Australia every year!

My Change Day Australia 2015 pledge

Over to you – I urge you to pledge now!

Have you thought about a pledge for Change Day?

If you’ve pledged – either this year or before – what have you achieved so far?

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Like this:

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6 simple steps to better know and help our patients:

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© 2013 Jacquie Garton-Smith (Photo of Jacquie by Mia Holton,Change Day image thanks to changeday.com.au )

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