Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind

by Jocelyn K. Glei

Unnecessary Creation allows you to take risks and develop new skills that can later be applied to your on-demand creating. Have you ever felt like you were in a rut? Perhaps you keep mulling over the same ideas, going to the same wells for inspiration, or opening the same toolbox every time you have to solve a problem. Your tools can become dull and your senses numb when you consistently apply the same old methods. Yet, it’s difficult to learn new methods or develop new skills in the midst of your on-demand work because you are being paid to deliver predictable results. In his book The Heart Aroused, the British poet David Whyte writes, “Take any step toward our destiny through creative action (it may be as simple as lifting a pen over a blank sheet of paper), and we know intuitively that we are giving up whatever cover we had.”19 The creative act is inherently risky because it requires you to step out into uncertainty. When you have time scheduled for Unnecessary Creation, you create a safe space to experiment with new ways of working. You get to try and fail without dire consequences. You can create what’s in your head rather than adapting what’s in your head to someone else’s expectations. These acts of Unnecessary Creation grow your confidence in self-expression, and the skills you develop along the way become new tools in your toolbox that can be applied to your everyday work.