Wouldn’t it be great if you woke up in the morning to a clean room. Went to work in a studio, with all the tools you needed to do your job for the day. And then were able to leave and spend time with your family. Thanks to Kankyo Kaizen, I am trying to make significant changes in my daily habits that will enable all these things to come true.
I am working hard now to be clean. While I was at the Joe Kubert school, my roommate was a slob. His side of the room was always a mess, he never showered, and he moped around all day producing his work. I can’t really blame him. Most of the guys there were straight out of high school never away from mom and dad too long to nurture us into living life as formidable men.
The deadlines were rough and it seemed everyday was not long enough to get all our “work” done. Which led to many of us thinking that we had no time to take the simple things in life into account….like our well being and our daily habits. The work controlled me instead of me controlling the work.
Working in comics will do that to you. I know several times I’ve pulled all-nighters to bust out a project on time. When this happens too many times in a row, you start to wonder if it’s worth it.
It seems uncleanliness comes when there is too much work, or when there is not enough work. When our company went under a couple months ago, I would end up moping around the house, trying to figure out a new direction to go. What it would be like when things turned around, but they never did. I’ve got 4 daughters and I still want to be an example for them. I’ve got to be the idea of a man that they will look for when they will be married, so I’ve dedicated myself to be clean and orderly, so they don’t end up with a slob like my roomate.
When I was out running last fall, I listened to an audiobook on the AutoBiography of Benjamin Franklin. Very interesting story, I highly recommend it. In the book, Mr. Franklin talks of 13 habitual practices a human being should aspire to be. Well, Simpleology added this new course, so I can effectively get better slowly over time in this area, so I don’t always have to live in a messy office, and it’s been helping me to commit to taking a shower everyday to be clean. It’s amazing how little you think about these social things when you are at home everyday.
So every Sunday, we will explore these habits and see how we can add these too improve our comic creator work environment. I started trying to do all 13, but it was a bit much so I broke it down to just 3 to be a little more manageable. Today, I will show you three of these and we will dive into each of them deeper in the week’s ahead.
1. ORDER — Let all things have their places; Let all parts of your business have it’s time
2. RESOLUTION– Resolve to perform what you ought, perform without fail what you resolve.
3. CLEANLINESS– Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation.
Simpleology has a checklist from 1 to 10 you can rate yourself on how well you do each day. I’m pretty hard on myself but over the next few weeks I hope to raise my levels up at least a 7 or 8 in all these areas. We are starting with these 3 because it will be practical and helpful. And I have seen a marked improvement in my ability to get things done when they are at full capacity.
Plus they are fairly simple to implement and the time is not to intrusive for adding these into your life. Think about where you want to start and every day make a mental note of where you are improving in each of these areas. By doing this, you will be able to be productive in your work, more energized in your life, and more confident in your personhood.