Eleven Minutes to Build A Boat
Feel like you are at stuck, at sea, or just treading water? Consider building a boat.
This week for Eleven Minutes to Mars we turn our attention to transforming those feelings of being adrift, through the simple act of building paper boat.
How-to:
📃 Gather the materials (keep it simple)
Yes, sure you can get as ambitious as you like but part of the exercise is to complete it in eleven minutes, so a single sheet of paper might be your best bet. In addition, if you have no idea how to make a bunch of saucy folds to make a boat like the one pictured. Fret not. Here are instructions and if you want to go rogue, the prompt is not to build a perfect boat, just to build a boat.
⏲ Set timer for eleven minutes
⏰ Make a boat
📱 Share a #boattomars image (optional) below
👀 Reflect on your experience
How did the mind boat compare to the actual boat?
Did you have to much time? Not enough? Just right?
What was your experience of that time?
What can this tell you about bringing ideas into the world?
🗣 A Tip! 🗣
If someone happens upon you while building your boat and perhaps said person might look askance at your boat building endeavor. Tell them, “I am flexing my bias to action muscles, letting go of crippling perfectionism, and honing my problem-solving skills!
⛵️ It’s not really about the boat 🛶
I mean it is and its not. It is about doing what you can in the time that you available. It is about what is using what you already have to make something. It is about not getting so lost in the world of plans, instructions, and possibilities that you never find your way to bringing those plans and possibilities to fruition.
Most likely you didn’t even imagine that you would build a boat today. Quite possibly you when you read this post you thought, “I don’t have time to build a boat! You must plan for such things! Besides, I have so much to do” and then, for whatever reason you let go of those thoughts and built your boat. Yay you! (written with no snark whatsoever)
But, you built it. Maybe it didn’t quite get done or come out as you imagined. It might be ugly. It might be magnificent. Maybe you are a paper folding maestro. Maybe not. Whatever you ended up with, in 11 minutes you went from having a no boat, to having a boat. Your boat. Celebrate that.
Final Thoughts
And there you have it. In eleven minutes you took an idea, an abstract image of what could be, you gathered the materials, you started iterating, you sailed the seas of sometimes unhelpful thoughts like “Boat building? You’re doing it wrong!”, you transformed material into something else, something new, something that you created. Isn’t this ultimately how any idea eventually makes is way into the world? How many idea boats do we all have sailing across the seas of our minds that never get to launch? Name your boat for one of those ideas you want to bring out into the world.
And if you decide to build again, the next one will be better because as you were imagining, folding, and reshaping matter, creasing the corners of your own tiny universe, you were learning about what works, what doesn’t, how time flows when you are folding and all the creative powers you have in you. Go build. And if you do, please share a picture!
