The Flexible Container
A methodology for finishing creative work built to fit to your real life
Hofstadter vs Parkinson
I’d like to introduce you to two fake laws of nature.
Hofstadter's Law (not a law!) was invented as a joke by the writer Douglas Hofstadter. It states that everything always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
That means, whatever you’re setting out to do, imagine you make a best-case and worst-case estimate for how long it’ll take. Take into account Hofstadter’s Law, and you’ll see that your worst case isn’t even close. But then the actual time it takes is even longer than the “Worst Case Taking Into Account Hofstadter’s Law.” If you've ever wondered why your creative projects always take longer than you thought they would… Hofstadter's Law in action.
So what do you do with that? You plan for lots of time, obviously! You give yourself plenty of slack so that even the worse-than-worst-case fits in your plan.
OK, but what about Parkinson's Law?
Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
(Also not a law! Just an observation of how things seem to work.)
Imagine you have a specific amount of work to do. If you give it 2 hours, it'll take 2 hours. If you give it 3 hours, it'll take 3 hours. If you give it 8 hours, it'll take 8 hours.
You can see the problem here. If you plan to give yourself all the time you need, according to Hofstadter's Law, you can end up dragging your feet and wasting time, cramming everything in at the last moment because you're using the time available, according to Parkinson’s Law.
I’ve experienced both “laws” in action, as I’m sure you have as well. I estimate my project is going to take a certain amount of time, and I think I’m being clever when I allow myself a little extra time to make sure there’s enough slack. But then it takes so much longer than I possibly imagined.
On the other hand, I've got a free weekend and think, all I’ve got to do is this one thing! Plenty of time! But then I poke at it a few times and end up on Sunday night at midnight trying to crank the thing out.
So what do we do?
First of all, remember, these are not physical laws. These are expressions of pattern recognition about human behavior, similar to Murphy's Law. That's very important because that means we aren’t tied to these principles as absolutes that will dictate reality.
Nonetheless, there’s a lot of truth to both principles. And every conventional productivity system fails creative people because it ignores one or both of these patterns.
The answer to both is what I call The Flexible Container.
A Flexible Container is a planning system for your self-generated creative work that's designed to bend without breaking: structured enough to keep you moving, flexible enough to survive contact with real life.
A flexible container has sides. It exerts some kind of control. It pushes back and gives structure to its contents. It’s something to lean against for support as you do your work.
But it's flexible. Because things do legitimately take longer than you think they're going to take. And life is unpredictable. A million other things constantly pop up, randomly demanding your attention.
Here's what you get when you Google flexible container.
Yes, it’s a giant tyvek sack. It’s not glamorous, But it is strong and light and can pull off amazing feats without breaking or even fraying at the edges. It can hold gravel, firewood, demolition rubble. It folds flat when you don't need it, and tucks out of sight. That’s the spirit we want to embody with our planning.
There are all kinds of reasons why you need flexibility. But you need boundaries and support too. You need structure in order to keep moving. By building a flexible container for each of your projects, we will walk the tightrope between Hofstadter's Law and Parkinson's Law.
There’s a lot in this article that can be useful immediately, once you apply it to your own situation. So to help you make those connections, I’ve put together a few questions.
Think of a productivity system you've tried that didn't work for you. Can you think of one aspect of it that kept falling apart for you?
Think of a specific project you’re working on. Does it have a defined finish line or is it more of an ongoing practice you want to commit to?
When you have a task on your list like “work on article,” do you tend to do that, or avoid it? If you do sit down to work but don’t finish, how do you feel about the work you did?
Save this one for near the end—it's the most important of the four: If you could only work on one thing this week and give it your full attention, what would it be? And what's actually getting that time and attention instead?
Keep these in mind as you read. We’ll come back to each one at the point where you'll have what you need to answer it.
The Flexible Container methodology applies to any kind of self-generated creative endeavor. I've had clients use it to finish their screenplays, their books, to get a body of work done for a gallery show, but also to launch a new business, create a course, put together a program offer, or develop a piece of software.
The Flexible Container is the core implementation methodology of the Creative Focus Workshop. It’s essentially the Act Phase of the Creative Engine. This is the phase where the work actually gets done in real life, and in the Creative Focus Workshop, it’s where we design a fully personalized system for supporting you through demanding, deadline-free creative projects. Learn more about the CFW →
Why every system you've tried has failed
It can feel like everyone in the world has a lot of…thoughts…about what you should be doing with your life.
They (try to) create a container for you, and force you to fit inside. Virtually everything we hear about “productivity” is another rigid container we’re told will definitely fit! For sure! And then everything will work!
But of course that’s a lie.
It can lead to the cramming-then-crashing cycle: heroic sprint, collapse, repeat. Or chronic lateness and inconsistency that feels like weakness of character (but is in fact due to the rigid container you’re trying to fit into), or, worst of all, a shame spiral where you fail to follow through on your intentions or miss a self-imposed deadline which causes you to feel like a failure, which then makes the project itself start to feel tainted.
Task management apps, checklists, pomodoros, Trapper-Keepers, time trackers, kanban boards, post-it notes…they’re all tools that can work some of the time for some of the people.
But there are two concepts that will make all the difference in planning that actually works:
- Start with YOU. Who you are. How your brain works. What’s in your life right now. What you’re starting with. What you care about.
- Proceed with flexibility. No one tool is ever a magic bullet. No plan survives contact with
the enemyreal life.
Ask yourself this. Bruce Banner was supposed to be so freaking brilliant, right? Why didn't he just invent a suit that expands? Was he living in denial?
Don’t be Bruce Banner! Let’s design a super-suit that will adapt to your circumstances, even if you end up needing to hulk out.
Super-suit = a Flexible Container, of course.
To clarify my silly mixed metaphors: There’s a BIG difference between
- Being flexible yourself, like our octopus friend, contorting yourself to fit into the cookie-cutter productivity and planning tools out there.
- And creating your own custom-built flexible container like the one Dr. Banner could have used to keep his outrageous wardrobe costs under control.
When the container flexes around YOU—when it’s both comfortable and inspiring (not to mention fashion-forward!)—that’s when you attain a reasonable level of control over your time and attention…
And that’s how you get the big things done.
Earlier in this article, I asked you to remember a productivity system that fell apart for you. What were the aspects that particularly annoyed you, made you feel like a failure, or just never happened?
Those are the places where the container that system proposed was too rigid. With those specifics in mind, you can start to build your Flexible Container around the gaps where that system broke down. That’s exactly where yours needs to bend.
The Three Stages of Planning Cultivation:
why personalization is an operational infrastructure necessity, not a “nice to have”
A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract. When he contracts, I expand.
And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits all by itself.
— Bruce Lee
In The Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee, Lee outlined the “Three Stages of Cultivation.”
Martial artists begin in the “primitive stage” where they organically respond in combat. “Of course, he may not be so-called scientific, but, nevertheless, being himself, his attacks or defenses are fluid.”
Then the martial artist starts training. They learn blocks, strikes, kicks…they become more knowledgeable. But, “unfortunately his original self and sense of freedom are lost, and his action no longer flows by itself. His mind tends to freeze at different movements for calculations and analysis.”
The third stage is what Lee described above. “The stage of artlessness, or spontaneous stage, occurs when, after years of serious and hard practice, the student realizes that after all, gung fu is nothing special. And instead of trying to impose on his mind, he adjusts himself to his opponent like water pressing on an earthen wall. It flows through the slightest crack.”
What are the Three Stages of Planning Cultivation?
Stage 1: Organic action.
This stage is where we follow our natural interest and work on projects because they’re inherently interesting and motivating. Unfortunately, our culture tends to destroy this natural state by about the age of 8 or 9.
Stage 2: Lifehacker.
After being burned many times by being forced by circumstances to finish things we don’t much care about (see: homework) and ending up pulling all-nighters, whiffing deadlines, and generally feeling like losers, we go out in search of tips and techniques to brute-force ourselves to get stuff done.
We attempt to impose strict self-discipline. We try apps, accountability partners, artificial deadlines, pomodoros, kanban boards. Yet we somehow keep busting out of our improbably purple pants. That leads us to develop a nasty, hectoring inner voice that continually tells us how much we suck when we fail to fit into those rigid, unforgiving productivity containers.
Stage 3: The Flexible Container.
You come to see that, after all, those productivity hacks are nothing special. And instead of trying to impose that false structure on your mind, you adjust yourself to the conditions of your real life like water pressing on an earthen wall. You flow though the slightest crack.
You become adept at the art of planning without planning
You’re not giving up on structure, or on your own ability to finish anything. Instead, you’re developing an adaptive relationship between your life and your goals. And when the container you’ve designed fits you, you spend less time fighting it, and put more time into the actual creative work you’re here to do.
That’s why personalization of your methodology is both functional and essential. It’s operational efficiency.
That’s why when it feels easy it means you’re doing it right, not getting away with something.
A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract. When he contracts, I expand… And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits all by itself.
— Bruce Lee
THAT is the state of relaxed readiness that you can achieve when you use a Flexible Container.
The toolkit: what are the parts of a Flexible Container?
Project or Practice? Start with a clear sense of what you’re planning for
There are two primary approaches for a Flexible Container. One is for a project with a concrete end point, for example, creating and launching a course. And one is for what I call a practice, a mode of creativity or an open-ended creative endeavor where you want to continue moving forward without a fixed end date, for example, a sketchbooking habit.
Most people try to plan practices like projects and wonder why they never feel like they’ve done enough. Most people try to plan projects without creating any relationship between the beginning and the end, never mind the milestones in between, and get stuck looping the beginning and whiffing deadlines.
While we’re on the subject. Let’s talk about deadlines.
External deadlines are problematic. Ever since elementary school, deadline-based motivational structure has been training your brain to rely on external pressure rather than intrinsic motivation. Internal deadlines are also highly problematic, because they do all of the above AND they tend not to work, since the consequences are often much less visible.
Further: When you miss an internal deadline, you’re very likely to fall back on shame tactics to try to punish yourself into action. Shame always backfires. Shame makes your project into a toxic waste dump that you can’t even get near without feeling awful and oppressed. That’s why self-imposed deadlines that aren't tied to real-world events are one of the primary reasons creative projects stall out.
Here’s what’s crazy: You can actually finish huge projects without a deadline at all. I’m going to show you how.
So here’s a suggestion: If your internal deadline is not related to any real-world events, maybe don’t have a deadline at all? Just sayin’.
Plan forward or plan in reverse?
Once you’ve decided whether you’re developing a Flexible Container for a project or a practice, you know whether you need to plan forward or plan in reverse.
Planning in reverse
Planning in reverse is what you need when you have a project with a clear end point, with or without a deadline (and ESPECIALLY with).
What does this mean? When you have a deadline, particularly a hard deadline with stakes, the way to hit that deadline is by starting at the end and working backward, mentally walking through the project and listing what needs to happen. Why start at the end? Because you know what the end looks like, for the most part. It's the beginning that's a mystery.
For example, Evan is a coach who had a TedX talk coming up, but they’d never done speaking at this level before. They used a reverse plan to scope out the phases: rehearsal last, then final draft, then rough draft, then getting a speaking coach to help with how to design a TedX talk. That got them motivated to find a coach, stat, to make sure the rehearsal stage had plenty of breathing room.
Working backwards is the most reliable way to figure out what needs to happen between now and the finish line, as opposed to working forwards, simply doing the next thing and then the next, which is what most people tend to do. Working forwards leads to failing to understand the full scope of a project and missing many steps in the planning. That’s why deadlines tend to slip so much.
This is related to the idea of “Implementation Intentions.”
You may have heard of implementation intentions in relation to voting. When a voting activist asks you if you have “a plan for voting,” they’re doing something very specific to help you get to the polls.
A field experiment by David Nickerson and Todd Rogers, conducted during the 2008 presidential election with over 287,000 participants, confirmed exactly this: helping voters form a specific plan for when they'd vote, where they'd be coming from, what they'd be doing beforehand, increased turnout by more than 4 percentage points. In contrast, simply encouraging people to vote had no significant effect.
Research has repeatedly shown that when you mentally walk through the steps of something you intend to do, you’re more likely to follow through and do it. One explanation is that when you identify steps where you’re confused or don’t know the answer, you have time to figure it out and make decisions ahead of time about how to handle that step.
Planning Forward
It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
— E.L. Doctorow, on writing
Developing a practice
Planning forward is the method to choose if your commitment is to establishing new habits or practices, and it’s very simple in structure. You simply identify your weekly actions to establish your practice, and/or what will your Quota Task commitment be to moving your project forward, and then you establish a weekly rhythm for these sessions. No deadlines. Just showing up.
The second question above asks, “Think of a specific project you’re working on. Does it have a defined finish line or is it more of an ongoing practice you want to commit to?”
Once you know which one you're planning for, you can stop waiting for a finish line that was never coming, or, if you do have a deadline, stop missing milestones you hadn’t mapped because you couldn't see the full shape of the project yet.
If only it were as easy as that to follow through on! We’re basically talking about developing a flexible creative schedule. In other words, a creative habit. I’ve got a lot of ideas about how to develop a creative habit. That's a whole post on its own — coming soon.
Two students in the very first Creative Focus Workshop used a shared Google Doc, literally for years, to track their weekly practice. Sarah and Susan would each make note of the type and number of quota task sessions they intended to complete that week, then at the end of the week they’d note their progress, and in a comment on the doc, comment and encourage each other. That’s how Susan published her book of essays, and Sarah her graphic novel.
Meanwhile, what’s a “Quota Task?” So glad you asked.
Quota Tasks: the flex in the Flexible Container
A Quota Task is a set quantity of time you're planning to devote to something. (As in, ”Spend one hour working on mind map for my new blog series.”) When you make an activity time-bound, as opposed to output-bound, you're more likely to do it. You can put it on your calendar, do it for the allotted amount of time, and then check it off your list.
If you're not done in one hour, you can schedule a second session. But making the task time-bound also allows you to stop and move on to new things after that hour is up. You won't feel trapped by the task or fall into self-blame for not finishing.
Quota tasks are how you build a consistent creative practice without relying on motivation or deadlines. Quotas, by their nature, take the focus off the end goal and put it squarely where it belongs, on being present with your work and moving it forward as part of the way you live your daily life. That’s what makes them the key concept to master when your goal is to build sustainability and ease into your work life, yet still get big things done.
This approach has been transformational for Shelley, a former screenwriter trained on punishing deadlines. When she stopped focusing on word count and started using quota tasks, it helped her realize that all the time she spent thinking and researching and working in all kinds of ways on her book was a necessary part of the work, and she started to be able to see very clearly that she was making steady, inexorable progress, with literally no deadline at all.
This is how you weave your work into your days, rather than working with a feast-or-famine approach.
You might not think quota tasks are for you, but…
If you’re a tough taskmaster and tend to create hard internal deadlines, using shame and self-punishment to get the work done, you might think easing up on yourself like this could never work. How would you ever get anything done??
I am here to tell you, the opposite is true. In fact, quota tasks actually just codify what we do anyway (when we’re not cramming and pulling all-nighters). We work on a thing for the amount of time we have available, and then we finish, or we don’t finish.
The magic they offer is simply allowing you to take credit for the work you’re doing and feel great about it (even if you haven’t “finished”) instead of wallowing in self-blame and feeling like you’re always falling short.
That means you’re a lot more likely to feel good about your project, instead of letting it be poisoned by shame. And that means you’re more likely to come back to it, and keep putting in the hours, day after day.
Until, holy crap! You finished!!
So if you make yourself miserable over missed self-imposed deadlines, this approach is for you even more than it is for those who are easier on themselves. It will be harder to implement. And your inner critic may be freaking out for a while.
But it works.
Coaching students in the Creative Focus Workshop, I find myself returning to quota tasks over and over, as the technique that unblocks progress in more situations than almost anything else I teach. Do not underestimate the power of creating tasks you can actually check off your list, as opposed to leaving “work on screenplay” on your to-do list for a year and never getting to check it off, no matter how much you work on your screenplay.
When “work on article” squats on your list day after day, it’s because that’s an outcome-based task, not a quota task. No matter how much you “work on,” if you don’t finish, you’re not “allowed” to check it off. That puts the list in charge.
It’s a subtle shift, but consider putting “work on article for 30 mins” on your list (and at a specific time of your day) and see how it feels to be able to check that off. And if you’re not done, just do the same thing again tomorrow.
This small change puts you back in charge. It lets you take credit for the work you actually did, whether or not you finished.
Action Trackers: making progress visible
An Action Tracker is a dedicated visual representation of your One Project for tracking your progress, separate from your daily task list. It maps individual tasks to milestones and stages, and answers questions your daily list can't: Where am I in this project? How does what I'm doing today connect to where I'm going? And — crucially — how much have I actually finished? This last gives you concrete evidence of the work you're doing when your Should Monster insists otherwise.
It might look like a Kanban board in Notion, a one-page quota tracking worksheet, a wall with color-coded post-it notes, or a star chart with actual stickers.
In the Creative Focus Workshop, Rauni created a physical board in her studio that would always be visible, since screen-based trackers got forgotten. Andrea put a colorful star chart on her fridge. Matt uses thumbnails of comics page-spreads that he hatches in with different colors and directions as the pages go through stages of production. My Illustration Projects students used a shared whiteboard with colorful cards and stickers.
The format is whatever will please you and help you stay connected with the work. What matters is that it's visible, malleable, and shows you both where you've been and where you're going.
Remember Shelley? She’s got a particularly relentless Should Monster. No matter how consistently Shelley works on her novel, her Should Monster still tries to berate her for not doing enough.
Shelley uses a “marbles in a jar” tracker, and moves a marble from one jar to another when she completes a quota task session. So when her Should Monster rears up, she can check her marble jar and verify: Yes, I did what I said I would do. That turns down the volume on the negative self-talk.
The knowledge and proof that you're keeping faith with yourself and doing what you set out to do is extremely powerful.
The Capacity Key
Break down your project! Set tasks! Make a tracker! All of this threatens to devolve into standard-issue productivity pap when it’s not reframed through the one lens that brings your Flexible Container into alignment with YOU and makes you the pattern on which it’s all built.
That lens is Capacity.
One of the smartest things anyone has said regarding the Flexible Container came from Gabriela Pereira, the founder of DIYMFA, when I ran a workshop for her community.
She observed that typically we start planning with a massive pile of things we want to get done—to-dos, ideas for projects—and see the job as figuring out how to jam it all into the container of our lives. The only question is “What order should I do things in?”
With the Flexible Container, we start with the container. And the container is YOU. Your life. Your constraints and parameters for success.
Only when you know the size and configuration of your container can you then make decisions you can stick to about what you put into that container.
What deserves a place in your container.
YOU are the measure by which all decisions get made.
When I taught this framework in a workshop, participant Endrené S. said:
The best part for me has been the idea of starting with MY CAPACITY instead of the project itself; it’s going to help stop me from overloading my to-do list. Clarity!! Thank you!!
The final question at the outset of this article is perhaps the most important: What would you put your time and energy—your Capacity—into if you were to actually, consciously, choose?
What is, in fact, getting your capacity instead?
You may not have total control over where your capacity goes. But to the extent you do have decision power: what would happen if you used yourself as the measuring stick for what you commit to this week?
Have you ever seen Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?
Great show, best of the Star Treks…but let’s not get into that right now.
More importantly, DS9 stars a CONTAINER.
(This particular container is not all that flexible, but still. Stay with me here.)
Yep, a container is a major plot point in many episodes. That’s because Head of Security Odo is a Changeling. His natural state is basically glowing goo.
Normally, he presents as humanoid because we weak humans can’t handle the truth. He holds us in much disdain.
But pretending to be human takes a lot of energy, and so sometimes he needs to just go be goo for a while, rest, and recover from the stress. That’s what his special container is for.
If he doesn’t get recovery time, he starts melting from the strain.
Is my metaphor hitting like Thor’s Mighty Hammer? Or perhaps a Cardassian mace? I hope I’m not being too subtle…
To spell out the very obvious point I’m making, one of the core principles of the Flexible Container is that your capacity is inherently limited. We may wish it weren’t so, but as long as we treat the “container” of our capacity as basically a garbage can for everything that we could potentially do, we’re going to get overworked and overwhelmed, and feel like everything is careening out of control.
Consistently overloading your capacity is a fast train to burnout-ville. And that’s how you don’t get your creative projects done.
But when you take control and consciously CHOOSE what you put into your “container,” you gain the power to finish what is actually most important, to YOU.
You’ll also ensure that your face won’t melt off from burnout and fatigue.
Which is nice.
I spent many years doing pretty much the opposite of consciously choosing according to my capacity and what’s most important. Instead, anything I took on became a massive sprint, and I’d tell myself, I’ve just got to grind through this ONE THING then I can take a break. But of course there's always another thing, right behind the first one, waiting.
There is no point at which you magically stop working yourself into repeated burnouts (like I did).
You have to choose to work sustainably. You have to change how you think about your time and your capacity, and take the time and space to make considered decisions. That’s how you get to recover so that the next thing you choose gets the BEST of you.
To return to the wisdom of Bruce Lee:
“I believe in sleeping.”
— Bruce Lee when asked by his brother Robert if he believed in God, from The Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee
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