What could you create if you left the dishes in the sink?

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In September, my wife Caro picked up a paintbrush for the first time in 15+ years.

It brought tears to my eyes.

It’s amazing to see the fire in her belly - when an idea takes hold, she has to get it out. She has to create. In that moment, committing that idea to canvas is her single most important task.

Our new mantra

This newfound zest, la joie de creation, gave birth to a new mantra for us when we need to do our one big thing.

We call it ‘Leaving the dishes in the sink’.

Once we’ve bundled the kids off to school and the house is quiet, our default next step is to tidy up after toddler breakfast. It’s the classic ‘make your bed in the morning’ type ritual touted by Navy Seals and other disciplinarians. We both like having a tidy house.

But one day last week, we’d caught the bug. Caro had been awake sketching paint ideas on her iPad since the wee hours. And a big idea for my book had popped out of my subconscious overnight.

We both wanted to dash to our creative spaces and let the ideas flow.

I suggested a new paradigm: ‘Let’s leave the dishes in the sink. Let’s go and make stuff.’

Painting, writing, creating, isn’t something we can do when the kids are home.

There are precious few hours each week when there’s time and space to create. So we’ve made a pact to spend as many of those hours as possible actually creating.

Everything else can wait. The dishes can sit in the sink until the afternoon when the house is a circus again.

This gift of time is critical for our creative sanity and for our sense of purpose & worth.

Every job has its dirty dishes.

The mundane, slightly smelly & tedious stuff you have to do regularly to keep going.

It’s the kind of stuff we feel compelled to do straight away - not because it’s enjoyable but because it’s certain. We know exactly what to do, and we can convince ourselves we’re being productive by doing it. We slip into doing it on autopilot. Often it looks like:

• Emails

• Admin / tidy up

• Recurring meetings

• Random phone calls

• Slack / Teams / Messenger chat

Here’s the thing about the dirty dishes: they’re defence. They’re reaction. They’re the past. They’re a cost of doing business. Nothing more.

These dirty dishes, these menial tasks, are a sneaky form of procrastination, really. By doing the dishes first (at home or at work) we’re secretly avoiding the heavy lifting. The thinking. The making. The stuff that could change our trajectory.

Yes, we need to clean the dirty dishes at some point. But I believe creativity; building things; starting new projects; finishing old projects is what propels us forward.

What could you create if you left the dishes in the sink for a while?

What if you turned off your notifications and did deep work before anything else, even if only for an hour? Could you get that nagging project off your plate? Finally flesh out that new big new idea?

Try borrowing our household mantra.

Leave the dishes in the sink. Go and spend focused time working on the single most important thing. All the chores, all the life admin, all the busywork, can wait. The dishes will still be there when you get back.

PS - here’s some of Caro’s recent work.

Did you try this? Reply to let me know how you went!