When you’re creative, you want the iron rule of discipline at your back.
We picture the great creatives as people who wandered around at their own whim. Working when they felt like it and frittering away the time doing god knows whatever else if they didn’t. Long periods of aimless drifting followed by manic periods of activity when inspiration struck.
But again and again if you look into the lives of creative people you find it wasn’t like that. Most of the prolific creators and artists we admire were very disciplined at sitting down and doing the work consistently — with no regard for inspiration, or energy or whatever.
We need to demand the same of ourselves if we want to emulate them — on whatever small level.
Reject ‘ideal conditions’ — merely do the work
What this discipline means in practice is no excuses.
Don’t wait around until the conditions are ideal. Back yourself to do what you need to do whatever the situation, and however you’re feeling — just park your arse in the chair and do the sodding work!
[Throughout this essay I’m going to provide a few specific illustrations — using writing as an example. But it’s the general idea that’s important here: substitute whatever makes sense for your type of creativity.]
If you’re a writer, don’t feel that you have to have hours, be in a quiet place, have done your warm-up routine, have your preferred word processor/typewriter/fountain pen/whatever. You can write on the back of a receipt, in a spare minute, with a dodgy, smudgy old biro, on a crowded and noisy train, when you’re feeling ill.
So stop making excuses
Don’t have your favourite pen? Shut up and do your work. Don’t have time to do your morning routine? Shut up and do the work anyway. Don’t feel the fingertips of the muse gently massaging your puny shoulders? Shut up and do the bloody work!
The desire for ideal conditions is just a tool you use to stop you doing the work. It’s Resistance getting in there and messing with your mind.
Once you can let go of the need for conditions to be perfect — or even _good_ — then you open up yourself to much more creative work, and more and better output.
This discipline also brings freedom from the crippling shackles of unrealistic expectations. If you only create when the conditions are perfect you heap untold pressure on yourself — because now you have to deliver. When you create every day regardless then the pressure to produce good stuff relaxes — it’s just another day at the office
This is not about making things hard for yourself
But the key thing to note is that this is about no excuses — not about hardship.
At the end of the day it simply comes down to doing the work. When you require perfect conditions you waste way too much time that could be useful. Equally, sometimes the restrictions and problems of “imperfect” time puts you in a different state where you can tap into creative ideas that would otherwise have eluded you.
When the stars align, and you’re able to work exactly how you’d like then it doesn’t block any of those good things from happening. So you shouldn’t be falling over yourself to make things difficult. Instead, you should grasp every positive option available to you when it’s there.
It’s simply that you don’t use them as an excuse when they’re NOT there.
You’re allowed to stack the deck in your favour
So give yourself every advantage possible when the gods allow it. Make life as easy for yourself as you can.
Sure, create your ideal morning routine if that’s what floats your boat. Then follow it whenever practical.
Work out what your favourite writing place is and arrange the space in a way that supports creativity. Have your favourite music playing as you write. Get in the mood with a bit of exercise before.
Whatever tiny little things push you up to a slightly higher level are great. Just don’t require them before you’re willing to get off your arse and get started.
And certainly don’t come to see them as necessary for you to put out your best work.
The key is that you don’t even think about that. You’re there creating and that’s it. There’s no benefit to judging your work in the moment or to worrying about whether the quality of your final output will be ‘good enough’.
While you’re in this stage of the creative act you’ve got one job and one job only: to get on with producing the work.
All that other stuff can come later.
The key is not to care one way or the other
So how do you do this in practice?
The key is not to get attached to one side or the other.
This is the happy medium between a bias to make things unnecessarily hard for yourself, and the tendency to procrastinate until everything is ‘perfect’ or as easy as possible.
Follow the example given in Marcus Aurelius’s description of Antoninus Pius:
“The way he handled the material comforts that fortune had supplied him in such abundance — without arrogance and without apology. If they were there, he took advantage of them. If not, he didn’t miss them.”
If it’s good enough for a couple of Roman emperors, then it’s good for you too.
Seeing yourself as impressively virtuous because you can write in the most challenging of circumstances is a trap. This is going to tempt you to get in your own way so you can feel good about yourself for overcoming totally unnecessary obstacles.
But it’s equally dangerous to see yourself as someone who benefits massively from ‘perfect’ conditions. Then you’re likely to slow things down and make excuses until those conditions are met. You’ll be forever rationalising why “it’s ok this time” to skip today’s allotted time for creative work.
So, really, you don’t want to think of yourself at all. Put any thoughts of yourself out of your mind. The only thing that fills it is the current creative act.
And that’s enough.
Take the attitude that it’s the act of creation itself that’s powerful and vital. There’s nothing in there about how successful you are, you merely need to be fully focused on creating.
So simply lose yourself in creating when it’s time to create. And create.
Hi Mark, you are so right in this, thanks for pointing out what a useful mindset looks like.
I remember how as a teenager one of my teachers mentioned the daily routine of Tsjaikovski. He started working early in the morning, every day, every week, every month, not caring about inspiration or good ideas whatsoever. I was flabbergasted, couldn’t imagine how a composer could create such beautiful music through such “rigid” rituals, such “limiting” schedules.
Teenager days have now long passed and through time I have finally come to admit that my chaotic creative flows cannot do without a solid framework and deliberately chosen settings.
Let’s continue the work.
Ronald