To get things done there must be a mix of challenge and uncertainty. If there isn’t, then boredom sets in and then nothing gets done at all.
Being bored and finding something to do is one thing. A positive thing. But being bored while doing the thing is entirely another.
Implementing challenges to creative or non-physical tasks can be confusing.
If you’re lifting weights, you could just add more weight. If you’re running, you could add another mile.
But what about writing? You could increase your output, I guess. But that doesn’t sound all that exciting.
If you were a painter I suppose you could try a different medium, some different kind of tools. Or if you were a musician you could try different instruments or styles.
But writing? There is genre. There is structure. There is style.
Challenges must be specific. They are restrictions, confines, weights. They are things that are difficult to reach, solve, accomplish.
I’m reading Italo Calvino’s Mr. Palomar at the moment. It’s a novel of sorts. Experimental. Its chapters follows a pattern of 3x3x3 for a total of 27 chapters. Things are broken down into sections but everything mirrors each other and talks with one another. It’s almost mathematical.
I’m also thinking of this article by Jane Allison which describes the shapes of fiction. Spirals, fractals, waves… different ways of experimenting.
Challenges are ways of experimenting. Ways of going past the familiar. Going into new territory. Going head on with a problem and finding a way to solve it.