by Rebecca Cochran

I heard an interesting piece on NPR this morning entitled, “For a Few Musicians, Beating Songwriter’s Block Is A Game.” The story recounted how singer/songwriter, Bob Schneider manages to write one new song each week. He and a friend came up with the idea as a way to beat procrastination. Their idea has grown into a songwriting motivation strategy they call “The Song Game.” You can read and listen to the NPR story here.

We can probably all benefit by turning an otherwise daunting task into a game. Involving other “players” in our game can create a sense of accountability. I recall doing this recently. I had become embarrassed that I had neglected my blog for a few months. (I’ll bet you know the feeling.)

On a lark, I contacted a colleague who was also a bit delinquent in posting to his blog. As he lives overseas, I used Twitter to contact him. I tweeted that I was in the process of writing a blog post on Design Thinking and asked him if he had any new ideas to share on the topic. He immediately responded saying that he was attempting to write a new post on the same subject.

Twitter is a wonderful mechanism. It bonds people with similar interests closely together. Being a virtual tool, it also provides a smidgen of distance, allowing for a bit of risk-taking.

So, I jumped in and publicly tweeted to him something akin to “I vow to share my next post with you by this time tomorrow. Would you like to make the same promise?” He immediately took me up on the challenge and we both had fresh new blog posts up for the world to see within 24 hours.

That little exercise was fun for both of us. Usually, a simple little challenge with a like-minded friend is all I need to get back on track.

What works for you? How do you get back on your blogging, songwriting, exercise or creative track?