Creativity needs empty moments to process

Good ideas don’t happen when you’re continually filling your head with other people’s words. Meditative regular (ostensibly non-creative) work done with reverent attention will unblock you. Ideally, once you’ve given it time to process, you can go toward what feels most alive.

Maybe the moments aren’t empty, perhaps they are still, circumscribed by the magic circle of play. It needs your full attention, and it also needs to be free of the specter of performance and management. Think of the difference between “winning” a game of tag with a child versus a performance review.

References

The Second Brain - A Life-Changing Productivity System . Directed by Ali Abdaal, 2020. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP3dA2GcAh8.

Let projects simmer in your back brain over time, rather than sitting down and powering through something.

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way . Penguin USA, Inc., 2010.

Doing meditative, regular work can help. Cooking, needlework, if it’s done with attention and intent.

Quiet, alone time is necessary. The most common form of self-sabotage is self-sacrifice. It makes a virtue out of deprivation. Self-destructive means “destructive of your true nature.”

opportunity for play.

Han, Byung-Chul. 2020. The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present. Polity Press.

Play is a kind of ritual, in that it is intensive, unproductive, still.

Work is tied to production and measured in performance. True play, ritual, being, involves none of these.

Lui, Herbert. “Forget the Computer — Here’s Why You Should Write and Design by Hand.” Medium, 3 Aug. 2019, https://uxdesign.cc/forget-the-computer-heres-why-you-should-write-and-design-by-hand-19031089138f.

In his book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball, author Gordon MacKenzie likened the creative process to one of a cow making milk. We can see a cow making milk when it’s hooked up to the milking machine, and we know that cows eat grass. But the actual part where the milk is being created remains invisible.