Lav's Writing Retreat Prep | Week 1
The Big Picture
Picked out project
Picked out challenge
Made declutter list
Found 5 points of friction
Wrote down ideal meals
Retreat Announcement Post: Link
How it works, details and tips below the cut:
How it works
Take the list as a to-do or an example of how to make your own. This is about taking actionable steps so small achievable chunks. Take credit for every action, tallies work great for this.
Assignments for the week:
Choose your project and challenge
The exciting part: choosing what you’re going to be working on for the retreat. Choose one project or a few, one or more challenges. Just make sure that you are not setting yourself up for failure by putting too much on your plate or setting your expectations too high.
Weigh the time you will have, and what you want out of this retreat, and write down a few measurements of success.
Here is a whole post about choosing a writing challenge: Link
Make a cleaning/declutter list
I want you to clear your life of distracts to make for the best environment to create. So part of our preparation is going to be cleaning and clearing your space. So you have a cleaner and clearer mind, making room for activities.
I like to start this by making a massive ridiculous list, walking around the house and writing down everything that I can possibly think of in no order. Then rewriting that in an order that makes sense (room, urgency, time-based) and then just picking the first few things that would be the quickest to take care of and starting. This gives you quick motivation.
We are going to keep this list handy for the next month and try to check off as much as we can off of it over time so we’re not having some massive stressful cleaning/declutter day. You can start on that list now or wait for next week.
I can make more posts about decluttering in the future, but there are a lot of resources on getting started.
Remember, if it gives you negative feelings, you likely don’t need it in your life.
Identify friction points
Like the cleaning list, I want you to go around your living/work space/digital space/creative process and find points of friction.
If you would like a more in-depth post about this, I have one here: Link
Start thinking about food
The one thing that I do not want to think about at all when I am doing a writing retreat is food.
I go as far as to meal plan every day and then meal prep all of my meals and have them in the freezer. All I have to do when a meal comes is look at my list and make that thing, no thought, no time.
It takes an entire decision out of my creative day to keep me writing (And make sure that I don’t skip a meal because I couldn’t decide what to eat).
Right now I want you to think of food. You don’t have to meal prep as I do, but if you plan to, now would be a good time to plan what you would like to meal prep. This is a great place for one of those big brain dumps before refining it into more understandable notes.
I will be sharing what I am meal prepping, and maybe it will give you a few ideas, but there are plenty of resources for this sort of thing.
Make sure you remember snacks and treats.
