{"id":480,"date":"2009-10-11T10:47:48","date_gmt":"2009-10-11T14:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henryalford.com\/?p=480"},"modified":"2009-10-11T11:02:28","modified_gmt":"2009-10-11T15:02:28","slug":"how-to-get-stuff-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/?p=480","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Stuff Done"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>&#8220;Every few years when it&#8217;s been another five years that have passed and I haven&#8217;t made a film and the depression starts taking over totally, I allow myself to do a commercial. And then I feel really dirty and get to work promptly.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>-Filmmaker and Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, in 2003, in a conversation with Salman Rushdie published in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.believermag.com\/issues\/200303\/?read=interview_gilliam\">The Believer<\/a>. This reminds me of a story about Sigmund Freud that writer George Prochnik told in a great article in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cabinetmagazine.org\/issues\/26\/prochnik.php\">Cabinet<\/a> two summers ago. &#8220;Sometime in the summer of 1909, not long before Sigmund Freud was due to embark on his only visit to the United States, he was enjoying a cigar in the company of his inner circle in the busy Biedermeier interior of Berggasse 19, when he suddenly announced, &#8216;I am going to America to catch sight of a wild porcupine and to give some lectures.&#8217;\u201d Cough, cough, awkward pause&#8230; <em>porcupine?<\/em> Then Freud continued,<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;&#8216;Whenever you have some large objective in mind, it\u2019s always good to identify a secondary, less demanding goal on which to focus your attentions in order to detract from the anxiety associated with the search for the true grail.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>(Thereafter the phrase &#8220;to find one\u2019s porcupine,&#8221; became a recognized saying in the Freud circle.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Every few years when it&#8217;s been another five years that have passed and I haven&#8217;t made a film and the depression starts taking over totally, I allow myself to do a commercial. And then I feel really dirty and get to work promptly.&#8221; -Filmmaker and Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, in 2003, in a conversation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}